25. Paul Harrison on Humanists in Business, plus Approaches to Activism Discussion

"It's difficult to think of an area of work life that isn't connected to humanistic thought. If you start with ideas around the dignity of each human, compassion, kindness, ambitions, ways to behave, being evidence-based and being equitable, fair and not biased wherever possible, you start to understand that those are the foundational concepts of humanism" - Paul Harrison, Humanists in Business Network

This week on Humanism Now, new panellist Christian joins AJ to discuss activism and campaigning; what makes an activist, why is it important to humanism and how has activism changed in the digital age? Plus we introduce CLH's new campaigns initiative.

Our guest interview is with Paul Harrison, Coordinator of the Humanists in Business Network, part of Humanists UK, Co-Founder of the UK chapter of the Humanistic Management Network & Partner at KPMG UK.

Panel references:

• Atheism Plus
• Gro Harlem Brundtland
• Niels Bohr
• Fridtjof Nansen & the Nansen Passport
• Hans Rosling TED Talks
• Moral (Self) Licensing 
• Arab Spring
• 'Clicktivism'

About Paul Harrison & the HiB Network

• KPMG Profile
• Humanists in Business Network LinkedIn Page
• Humanists in Business LinkedIn Group
• Humanists UK Professional Networks 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hello and welcome to Humanism. Now the podcast from the Central London Humanists. I'm your host, james Hodgson. This week we're going to be talking all about activism what makes an activist, why is it important to humanism and how has activism changed in the digital age? Plus, we'll have an interview with Paul Harrison, the coordinator of the Humanists in Business Network, a part of Humanists UK, to discuss all of this and more. I'm delighted to be joined by AJ. Good to see you again.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Hi, james, lovely to be joining you again.

Speaker 1: 0:33

And to welcome a new guest to the podcast, a fellow committee member at Central London Humanists, Christian Jensen.

Speaker 3: 0:40

Thanks for having me Pleasure.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Well, welcome on board, christian, and looking forward to introducing you to our membership and hearing about the new initiatives that you have in store for us with CLH. But before we start, we have our regular icebreaker question. Just to get to know our panel a little bit better, and in honour of Christian, this week's icebreaker question is who is your favourite historical Scandinavian Christian? As it's your first show, would you like to go first?

Speaker 3: 1:06

Sure, I thought we were looking for something that might feed into the theme. So I was looking at activists and of course the first one you think about would be greta thunberg, but that's a bit too obvious. So I chose a gro Harlem Brundtland, a previous prime minister of norway, whom I have found very, very impressive and interesting and inspiring because she's basically the person that sort of introduced the concept of sustainable development when she finished her Brundtland Commission for the UN in 1987, which means she's a nice also counterpoint to Greta, because she worked inside the system and is also now running an organization well, part of an organization called the elders leaders in a lot of positive projects. So she's a nice counterpoint to Greta who works outside the system is she connected to the papers that later became kind of.

Speaker 1: 1:57

The idea behind a 15-minute city as well is that. Is that that same school of thought?

Speaker 3: 2:01

I am not aware of that. She uh stepped a bit away from the un lately. Could very well be great.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Thank you for that christian and aj, how about for yourself? Who would you?

Speaker 2: 2:12

nominate? Well, the first person that came to mind was neil's ball um, and. But I think linking it to the the activist uh theme of this week's episode is a good idea. I think that that's a good move by Christian. So I think that's going to force me to rethink a bit. Well, maybe I can still to Niels Bohr, because I think his insights into quantum mechanics, his relationship with Einstein, his kind of very carefree and laissez-faire attitude to God and the probabilistic universe I've been very inspired by. On the activist side, maybe Nansen you know Friedschof Nansen of the Nansen Passport, especially as I spend a lot of my time working with refugees, stateless people, asylum seekers etc. And the kind of forming the formulating idea behind what he proposed travel documents to stateless people between the two world wars I think was very pioneering for that time and it's an inspiration for us even to today. And Bo was Danish and Nansen was Norwegian, ifwegian, if I remember right, brilliant.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Well, thank you very much for sharing guys, and yes, I definitely agree with neil's boar. Um, perhaps spent too long in the shadows about einstein, but actually now he's getting more of the respect and acknowledgement that this deserves. His, his contributions and I'll just throw in there my nomination, hans rosling, to check out, probably his ted talkss. They are probably the best, I think, of any and an inspiration for much of modern day data science. So thank you everyone for contributing. So, as mentioned, we wanted to start with our favourite Scandinavians, to welcome our newest member of the regular panel here and also a newest member of the Central London Humanist Committee. So, christian Jensen, thank you so much for joining us. I guess, just before we get into the conversation around activism, which I know you're involved with, it'd be great to hear a little bit more about yourself, your journey and how you came to be involved with CLH.

Speaker 3: 4:17

Yeah, well, I'm Danish, so I was born in one of the most atheistic countries in the world.

Speaker 3: 4:23

So that came very natural to me and I moved to London when I was 19 years old and focused most of my activism engagement at that point with various environmental projects. Later on I had, let's say, a bit of the classic Hitchin-Dawkins phase very skeptical, maybe too militant atheists, and I fell out of touch with that community when there was a movement called Atheism Plus that was trying to get a bit of the old social justice involved but that had a very fierce backlash online so I felt it lacked a bit more of a human touch. So I went back to mostly environmental projects. Then during the pandemic I saw so much conspirituality you know conspiracy theories, spirituality with Trump and lockdown conspiracies, vaccine hesitancy, black Lives Matter so that really got me re-interested in the more humanistic aspects of secularism and similar projects and after lockdown as well, I really joined in for some social contacts. So I found the pop socials of Central London. Humanists joined those. They were great and then really got into the discussion groups as well. And, yeah, the rest is history.

Speaker 1: 5:47

And, yeah, you've been a fantastic asset to the group as well, so great to have you here on the podcast, and we can also announce that you're introducing a new strand of events for central under humanists. So, um, could you tell us a little bit more about the event series?

Speaker 3: 6:01

yeah, it is literally the event series activism series, so to say where in hopefully not too long we will set up an open sort of town hall where people can come with the ideas they have for activism projects. We have a lot of great projects both within the wider humanist movement but also in our local group, so this will be a chance for people to bring them up and see if other people are interested and get some balls rolling.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Absolutely, and we will be announcing the first of those soon and whenever you're listening to this. We're hoping that they'll still be running as a regular series through Central London Humanists. So that should be live on our meetup page, which we will link to in the show notes. And so I wanted to invite you and AJ on the panel today to discuss more about what it means to be an activist, particularly in the modern world, because I think this word gets thrown around quite a lot and perhaps there's different understanding and different interpretations of what it might mean. So it'd be good to dig into that a little bit, particularly before we launched the new activism program. Aj, in your view, how would you define activism and why is it important to humanism?

Speaker 2: 7:06

Thanks, james, and I just would like to echo my pleasure that Christian is joining the committee, and I think his experience and his eye for, and his passion and zeal for activism and actually doing things and getting things done in the real world, not just being a talking shop, which a lot of humanists get accused of and quite rightly in the humanist movement I think that's something that I find very inspiring and that I try and strive for daily in my life as well. And we've discussed activism a few times before and I'm glad that we're on the podcast. I'm glad that we're sort of focusing on this now as an episode when we talked about, I think when we had Anya on and she was talking about her kind of maybe pushing the Biden administration to do more in Israel-Palestine and her kind of disillusionment with the humanist community globally, the NGOs and so on. It should be a reminder. It should be a galvanizing force not to leave humanism a reminder. It should be a galvanizing force not to leave humanism but to commandeer it and to engage with it further and to make sure that it's serving the interests of the majority in a democratically accountable way.

Speaker 2: 8:13

I mean these town halls and fora where people can bring in their social justice passions and their views, even if not every project can get a launch, because that's just the way of them. We've discussed before how humanist uk that did a poll of them, of our members, and we had 70 different issues that came up as things that should be lobbied in parliament and you just can't go to politicians or political party with 70 different issues. You can barely go to them with six issues and seven issues which is what's on the Humanist UK website as our priorities things like assisted dying, faith scores, freedom of speech, reproductive rights, etc. But even those can be quite difficult. Just looking at, for example, the Momentum Jeremy Corbyn movement, the Sunrise movement in the US and under Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Young people are particularly and you can see with Israel-Palestine now how that's become the defining issue very, very quickly of our time Students, activists. It's basically like with people who have been there and lived through it, like 1968 again and the Vietnam War protests. So it doesn't take much in some sense in terms of only one student encampment in one university, satellite universities all around the world. So in that sense it doesn't take much. And young people, if we want looking at it from a humanist future and securing the future of the humanist movement. How do we attract young people and show them that we're relevant, which is also what Anya mentioned, that we have to be active. We have to be showing what our social justice chops are. So I'm very excited about the programs we have in store.

Speaker 1: 9:46

Thanks, aj and Christian. From your perspective, how do you define activism and, in particular, what do you see as the difference between activism and campaigning, which are often used interchangeably but can mean very different things?

Speaker 3: 10:01

Yeah, I was going to start with calling them interchangeable in a lot of people's minds, and we also have advocacy. We have a lot of different words that are basically a sort of Venn diagram where a lot of them overlap and they can be used interchangeably, as we mentioned. But I would probably say that activism is engagement for social or political change. Engagement for social or political change it could be a series of actions or engagements, whereas a campaign is more of a movement, chosen focus, where the activism will take part within the campaign. So you could have a campaign against abortion, for example, and then the activism would be a protest or a letter writing campaign. I often find that activism is put on a sort of spectrum in comparison with advocacy. Whereas advocacy is the awareness-raising, the information-sharing, and activism is the more direct engagement, often on the street or face-to-face with people. So, for example, if I can very cheekily highlight another podcast no-transcript, presumably we can link those in the show notes, but that will be a good sort of compare and contrast between the two terms.

Speaker 1: 11:41

AJ, I wonder from your, your perspective you know you've been involved in lots of campaigns, advocacy and activism on humanist issues and others. What do you think of the merits of different approaches and do you see any as more effective than others, or does it take a mixed approach to most issues?

Speaker 2: 11:58

Activism being considered as the rent that we pay for living on this planet, which is what I consider it as is a good mindset for humanists to have, and it keeps us focused on that. I mean my Baha'i friends that I have through my interfaith dialogue work. They say we have to walk the path of service. Their religion, their beliefs, are not just a private philosophical thing that they hold and they feel good at home, you know, in their living room saying I'm a Baha'i, I have these beliefs, so I'm waiting for God to come rescue me. Whatever their beliefs are, they really do put it on the front foot and say no, we have to be out there, we have to be actively involved in transforming the civilization and the future that we're building, and I really respect that, even though we differ a lot in our beliefs. And so walking that path of service and activism as an obligation and a duty in different ways and we mentioned this before as well that the single mom, nurse, who's working, you know, three different jobs to put food on the table for her kids their activism is going to be different from what I can do and from what you can do. So advocacy, professional advocacy, ngos, academics what they can do is and you can even see again. Let's bring it back to the Israel-Palestine protest now. On campus you can see what students are doing, faculty members are doing, ex-students and alumni are doing and they're achieving successes. The universities are divesting. There's many, many success stories of them getting what they want. So we need that sort of I could think of it as a rainforest. You know the ecology, the multiple survival strategies are needed to ensure the health of a rainforest and the biological diversity.

Speaker 2: 13:33

In the same way, for a resistance movement, you need kind of you know, banging on the door activists. You need kind of the encampment, the teach-ins, the marches, the protests. You know some people. They just don't know what to do but they feel like I mean, I've been going to the Gaza protest here in London, the Palestine solidarity protest, yeah, and some people all they can do because they don't know all about the history and they don't want to get really involved in that because they're not sure about themselves. But if they can go and hold a sign and march and feel good about themselves In some sense, that could be a bit wasteful but encourages people to have a good morale about it and then they then make some proportion of those people may then go and take the next step and may actually come to an activist meeting. So I think we need we shouldn't be too precious about the types of ways that people can get involved in the movement. As long as they're in and paying attention, that in itself is a win.

Speaker 1: 14:23

I love this rainforest analogy as well. Whilst we can all sometimes feel quite helpless and you do wonder what can I do, there's always something that an individual can do, and there's always individual skills and different ways that we feel comfortable engaging with these issues, and so I think we should, as you say, allow people to try to influence change in the ways that they're comfortable, and also not devalue pragmatism as well. I think that's sometimes it does have to be more of a pragmatic approach, but we need, as you say, also those people who are just out there trying to making the noise. So, just before we wrap up on this topic, I'm interested to go in a slightly different direction and just talk about how activism has changed more recently, and I'm thinking particularly in the digital and social media age.

Speaker 1: 15:09

You know, some criticisms I recall from a few years ago was that um, activism had kind of been reduced to making noise online and arguing with people on twitter. Um, and I think to go back to, as you mentioned, with the current protest, aj, whatever your opinion on those are, at least people are actively out there, actively engaging with the topic now, rather than just liking or unliking a tweet and considering that as some form of protest. So, christian, do you think there's been a change in the way in which we engage with these topics in the digital age, and do you think that's a good thing?

Speaker 3: 15:43

It's absolutely been a fundamental change, but the first thing I would always bring up when it comes to technology, that it's a tool. It can be used for both good and bad, and we aren't. When we say activism, we are presumably talking about ourselves and the projects we consider good, but activism are also used by people that we would not agree with. So it has made it easier for everyone who wants to act and engage. But if we, for example, look, if we start with the criticisms such as, for example, mis and disinformation, it has never been easier to share propaganda or outright lies that are damaging, easier than ever. We heard about the disinformation dozen on the vaccine hesitancies and vaccine propaganda, and we have heard about YouTube pipelines into the alt-right. So it's been a lot easier for people, especially during the pandemic, to fall into these filter and echo bubbles, which, of course, is much more difficult if you engage with someone face-to-face. As you mentioned as well, we have clicktivism, which is one of the big challenges in the past, as in oh, I've clicked something good, I've shared a petition, I've sent maybe a dollar to something good, and it's called moral licensing that you then say I am now a good person officially and I can continue doing basically whatever else I want, maybe even something that is harmful in some other ways. For example, I might consume more. We often see that the people, after they've done activism, will treat themselves so if you do something good online, you might then end up spending more that harms the planet in an environmental way. So it's not just good, but when we look at it specifically from an activist point of view, it has been revolutionary in terms of movement building.

Speaker 3: 17:29

For example. Uh, 10 years ago, 50 years ago, we had the arab spring, which used twitter to basically overnight change a political situation. And in hong kong, a couple of years ago, that was literally called the open source revolution, because they were sharing maps in real time. They were voting real time. A couple of years ago, that was literally called the open source revolution, because they were sharing maps in real time, they were voting real time. A lot of them were saying like we are like water that we can flow around the police because it takes longer for them to organize than it does for us. And we see a lot of, again, hashtag campaigns. We've seen Me Too. We've seen Black Lives Matter. So, while that, of course, sometimes has the danger of clicktivism. It is undeniable that suddenly millions of young people like Generation C has been called generation activists because they're digital natives and take to it so readily that millions of young people around the world, across nations and across sectors and across skill levels, have been able to work together much better now.

Speaker 1: 18:23

Clicktivism is going to be my word of the week. That's a brilliant phrase. I'll be adopting that for sure, AJ. Is there anything you'd like to add?

Speaker 2: 18:30

Yeah, I hadn't heard clicktivism before. I heard hashtag activism or hashtagivism. But again, without being too precious about it for some people, that is good. To go back to my single mom, the nurse working ridiculous hours a day. If she has five minutes or 10 minutes to spend on something and all she can do is join a hashtag movement or sign a petition or just throw a like in somewhere, that's at least something. Again, it doesn't.

Speaker 2: 18:54

I don't know who was who said that. I think it was Martin Luther King. Give me a few people, dedicated and pure, and I'll shake the world. It only takes a few. It only took those few people what 50 people? Students at Columbia to start something, and now this has now become unstoppable. And look at how many gains they've won. So it doesn't actually take much. And we don't know that those few people who sat in at the lunch counter in Birmingham, alabama, in the civil rights movement did they know that they're going to be starting? There's a lot of work beforehand, there's a lot of work afterwards and Martin Luther King was riding on a wave of big organization, but it's about blooming where you're planted and we're going to talk about humanistic management and humanists in business later on as well.

Speaker 2: 19:33

An activist doesn't have to be a radical. You know, living in a shared house, you know in a polyamorous relationship, etc. You can be an activist wherever you are. I think that's really what power centers are afraid of. If we're talking about challenging institutional power, it's when the police start questioning following their orders. The students now are asking the police what would it take you as they destroy the student encampments? What would it take you to not follow orders? Is it going to be 50,000 babies killed? At what point do you question your own institution? And once we start having that kind of a mindset, which can be diffused through the internet, through digital networks, because it's hard to stop that 100 years ago, 200 years ago, if you had to spread something, you had to spread something physically, by printing paper, by going to a meeting, and those can be stopped, whereas now, as we've seen in many nefarious ways ISIS recruitment and so on people can be recruited for very, very nefarious things. We should be able to use the same, the same tools to recruit people for good things, for positive activism, and to constructively contribute towards a better civilization.

Speaker 2: 20:38

Christian mentioned the Twitter hashtag. Activism that led to the Arab Spring. Wikileaks has been a game changer. It's changed. Journalism, I mean, despite what's happening to Julian Assange, which is a scandal in our own country, despite that, no journalist will ever look at their sources the same anytime again. With privacy and with these other, it's a constant battle between privacy advocates and between the security states. So that's a to-ing and fro-ing.

Speaker 2: 21:05

But I think digital activism certainly has a place. It's the future, it's here to stay and ultimately we have to go to where people are. If we're too precious or too reluctant to go to TikTok or to go to where people are, then we're not being an activist, we're not being a community servant, because we have to go where people are. We can't expect them to come to us, even if I don't go to TikTok to get my news. I'm a bit of an older millennial. My news is mainly in Twitter, but I know that the younger millennials and Gen Z and younger they get their news from TikTok. So if we want to appeal to them, we have to be there. Of course, with the surrounding security, we have to push for that as well. But I think platforms are the future of activism and they're here to stay and we need to get to grips with that.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Well said well, aj, christian, thank you very much for your thoughts and we will be back with AJ and Christian after this week's interview with Paul Harrison. Paul Harrison is the volunteer coordinator of the Humanists in Business Network, part of Humanists UK. He's also co-founded the UK chapter of the Humanistic Management Network. Professionally, paul is a partner at KPMG UK with more than 35 years experience as a tax expert. Paul applies his deep commitment to humanism and interest in psychology to professional services, advising businesses and professionals on ethical tax compliance.

Speaker 1: 22:25

But we're here today to talk all about the new Humanists in Business Network, which I'm also delighted to be part of the steering committee. Paul, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now. It's a real pleasure, james, I'm very happy to do it Well. Thank you, yes, and so, as mentioned, I'm pleased to be working with you on the Humanists in Business Network and this is something you and I have been discussing along with some colleagues for many months now and we're delighted to be launching with KPMG very soon. So for background and I know you've been working with Humanists UK in this area and others for a while what would you see as the purpose of the Humanists in Business Group? Yeah, I think it's probably threefold.

Speaker 4: 23:04

Um, certainly in its origins anyway. Um, we've kind of changed the emphasis over time, but it is under the auspices of humanists uk, as you say, james. So the the first kind of original intention was to try and galvanize support amongst the current members of humanists uk and any potential new members who were in the business community, because that's a community you'd expect to have resources and it would help Humanists UK's strategy if we could get those resources galvanized in a way that was helpful to that. So that was the first thing for us to do. I think the second thing that we started to do was to help other organizations, mainly larger organizations, who were looking to try and set up employee networks of their own for those with a humanist worldview, and we did quite a bit of work with some big organizations to help them do that Again, I think with a view to helping attract people towards Humanist UK to help with their strategy.

Speaker 4: 24:05

And the third one was to help develop a compelling voice for humanism in the business domain, which sounds a bit sort of esoteric, but I was quite struck when I first got involved with Humanist UK that they had lots of really great things to say in all kinds of areas of the real world, but nothing that I could find within the business world. And of course the business world is critically important to everything. Really, we all work for businesses. We might run businesses, they drive the economy and all that kind of stuff. So it seemed to me very odd that humanism didn't have a visible and vocal presence within that domain. So that was the third purpose and it's why I kind of moved into the sideways network of the humanistic management network, which is much more centrally focused on having a voice within the business community.

Speaker 1: 25:00

Did you also have some personal motivations for relaunching the network this this year?

Speaker 4: 25:06

oh, definitely yes. So, um, I was on a short career break when we first started humanist in business and I spent a lot of my time working with humans uk to do that um. I then went back into full-time work in 2019 after after the short break, so just having the, I didn't have the time and resources really to dedicate properly to actually achieving the things that we wanted to achieve um, so we did quite a bit in the early days, but then it necessarily tailed off a bit more recently, which is the good news. I think humanist uk have kind of put this further up their list of priorities and have dedicated some additional resources to, to relaunching the networks.

Speaker 1: 25:46

I'm I'm really quite excited and optimistic that, um, with that added added resource and and uh and support we can, we can actually start making a difference more more quickly, totally agree that this is an area where, um, you know, we can potentially reach a huge number of people, um, and I'm sure there are lots of people in the professional world who are deep critical thinkers and probably might align with humanistic values. You mentioned in your intro that there are, you know, areas of work life where humanism could be particularly relevant. What do you see as the main areas where humanistic values are particularly relevant to work life or the professional world in the current day?

Speaker 4: 26:30

Yeah, I did give some thought to this question. It's actually, for me anyway, very difficult to think of an area of the workplace or work life that isn't connected in some material way to humanistic thoughts or perspectives. Connected in some material way to humanistic thoughts or perspectives. And I think that's because, if you start with ideas around the dignity of the human person being very important, and compassion and kindness being important, ambitions and ways to behave and being evidence-based and being equitable and fair and not biased wherever possible, I think once you start to understand that those are the foundational concepts of humanism, it's really hard to say that the entirety of the workplace isn't already infused with those things. I think. And therefore, where is it most salient? I suppose at the highest level, certainly in larger organizations. Recruitment processes being unbiased and equitable is an obvious way. Having social mobility as a priority, making sure there's equity around that is an important area. There's equity around, that is an important area.

Speaker 4: 27:44

But also, you know, things like technology and artificial intelligence in particular, certainly in my, my sector, is is a massive thing at the moment, and one big question that I just don't think we've we've answered yet is how do we take the advantages that are available from ai in a way that that does respect the dignity of the human person? Um, because one can see it, see it replacing what I think has now been called cognitive manual labour, which in professional services, is actually a lot of what's done. It's not all of what's done, but a lot of it is cognitive manual labour. And if that's to be replaced by technology, what does that mean for people? Training them, recruiting them, um, retaining them? It's, it's a, it's a huge question and I? I see that as one of our major challenges. So in the, in, certainly my workplace and I think, generally many workplaces, the humanistic perspective is right at the top of the agenda in my, in my view, but it's all over.

Speaker 1: 28:38

It's all over the workplace absolutely, I think we're talking both in terms of the practices, you know, the day-to-day work environment, um, which has been really tested post-covid, and there's there's lots more um, questions about autonomy and the individual um since covid. But yes, I think ai is the the coming major topic of our time and it's going to impact in particular the working world, the professional services world.

Speaker 4: 28:59

I I suspect in five to ten years things will be, you know, radically different, unimaginable absolutely and unimaginable is the right word, because that that, in a way, is the scary bit, because one can look for guidance and footprints, usually to tell you what the future might look like, because others have maybe gone first or there's something similar that's happened before. I don't think this has got any footprint or guidance at all really. So we're having to design the future ourselves and trying to make it what we want to make it, which is why I do think that that the humanistic perspective is such an important element of how we approach this. One other thing occurs to me. Actually, you mentioned my interest in psychology, so in my career break I did a, an MSc in occupational psychology.

Speaker 4: 29:44

My research topic was psychological safety, which is a bit of a buzzword now in some big organization, and that is all about making sure that people feel able to have their say, whether it's in meetings or or, more generally, raising their hand, call out misconduct or misbehaviour, but at the positive end, come up with ideas, half-formulated ideas, not be too worried about the risk of being humiliated or embarrassed or shouted down. That is a fundamentally humanistic thing because it's about the dignity of people and it encourages inclusion from different backgrounds and so on, of people and it encourages inclusion from different backgrounds and so on. So it also adds to creativity, innovation, better solution, uh, engineering and all and all those things. So I got very enthusiastic about psychological safety and and it was something that my firm embraced and others have as well, as a major tool to to, to, to optimize the assets that the organization has, so, but that's fundamentally a humanistic concept.

Speaker 1: 30:43

Yes yes, absolutely, because I think what we're really talking about is how decisions are made, and in an old sort of more traditional structure where it's very hierarchical and it's just it's top-down decision-making, you are missing out on so much potential different worldviews, different perspectives, individual experience or expertise where someone in the team may feel that they can't speak up or in the past hasn't had the space to do that, and that's an anti-scientific way of making decisions absolutely.

Speaker 1: 31:13

Um, so yeah, so I can totally see and I guess that reflects in the in the humanistic management um group that you co-founded as well in terms of how do we you know organisations would be trying to be greater than the sum of their parts and getting as much different perspectives, different expertise. But also, how do you, how do you sort of utilise all of those and allow everybody the space to collaborate and create creates? Do you think it's important that people openly identify with humanism or being allied to humanistic values at work? And if you'd like to maybe share some of your experiences discussing these ideas at KPMG and how that's gone down, I think that'd be really helpful.

Speaker 4: 31:55

I think this is a really good question. To a degree it's a personal thing, isn't it, as to whether you feel it's important to you to be vocal about those things or not. I think, in terms of developing humanism and advocating for it and evangelizing about it, as I like to try and do, then clearly you do have to be vocal about it. Then clearly you do have to be vocal about it. But it does take some courage, right? Because, well, it takes courage anyway to be open about deeply held personal beliefs. But I think, particularly with humanism, in a way, because you look at the statistics about who identifies as being religious and non-religious today, and I think more than half the population, by inference anyway, identifies as not being religious. But it wouldn't be true that they all identify as being humanist. Right, they might not really care about what they call themselves, they're just not religious. But certainly a big proportion would either already say that they were humanist or actually have views that were fully aligned with the humanistic worldview but not have put a label on it. So there is a view that says, well, if you're not religious in this way or that way or the other way and you don't sort of fit any other obvious category, aren't you? Just everybody else? So you're not really part of a group, you're just one of those people that's not in a group. Part of a group? You just you're just one of those people that's not in a group.

Speaker 4: 33:23

Yeah, um, and I think that that sort of militates against being vocal because, well, why would you be vocal if you're not?

Speaker 4: 33:26

You know, if you're not, um, like in our film, for example, we've got a muslim network, a jewish network, a christian network, an afro-caribbean network and so on and so on, as a network for lgbtq plus people, and so on and so on, and you don't. If you're not in one of those groups, why do you need to put your hand up and say you're anything at all? So I think that that's a bit of an issue. But because humanism is not just about what you're not, it's not, it's not just about not being religious I mean, that's an important aspect of it but it's also about being pro some really important things human rights, equity, compassion, kindness, rational thinking, evidence-based decisions, inclusion all the things that we've talked about those are really, really things which most businesses now want to project as well, want to exactly right, exactly right, and we're also to be to be completely straight, of course, uh, we're not fans of religious privilege, right, but we do support freedom of religion and freedom of belief.

Speaker 4: 34:26

So there are things that are quite crunchy as well. So I think it does take courage to speak up. I would clearly recommend people do speak up, but when I spoke up at my firm, I was quite nervous about it for all the reasons I've talked about. I thought the response would probably be oh no, we can't really support you doing an employee network because you're not one of those, you're just everybody else and it might just upset everybody else because aren't you anti-religion? Um, and there was, there was a bit of, to be fair, I didn't really get pushback like that, I got curiosity and uncertainty sorry, what?

Speaker 4: 35:10

What is humanism? Um, quite common, yeah, yeah, and it, and you could see, thinking, is it anti-religion? So one of the lessons that I learned, I think, was you know, be vocal if you can be vocal, but, but, but make sure people understand that we're not anti-religion, because that can often be an assumption, because we're clearly not anti-religion. In fact, we obviously support anybody with a religious belief being able to to be open about that exactly. Yeah, what they're right, they're right to do that in many ways humanists international.

Speaker 1: 35:41

They're probably the greatest advocates for sort of freedom of belief and religion globally absolutely absolutely right, yeah um, no, and I see that as absolutely a reason to for more people to, yeah, you know, be, be, you know, as you say, not not separate, uh, advocate. They don't have to advocate or evangelize, but be open and honest about it and it. It helps with that normalization process and, in particular, dealing with that immediate concern that people think that either it's a pseudo religion which is the other one you get quite a lot or that it's an anti-religious movement. So, yes, the more people who come out and openly talk, and if you're a kind, considerate colleague, then people will associate that with humanism as well.

Speaker 4: 36:23

Just one thing I'll mention. It's a, it's technical in a way, but it was important within my firm. It might be important in other places. Humanism, or a belief in a humanistic worldview, is a protected belief under the equalities Act, which is important for my firm because in order to become an employee network, you have to be a protected group within the Equalities Act. And so my first well, maybe we're not, but we are a protected group, is a protected belief.

Speaker 1: 36:55

So that's a really useful bit of information that I think I wasn't aware of that, so I think again that's that'll be very helpful. I'm wondering so you had the initial conversation, as you said. You were a bit apprehensive, but actually people were approached it with curiosity what was the process like then in setting up the employee network at KPMG and how? How do people find you?

Speaker 4: 37:20

Well, we're going through that right now, james, so we're not at the end of that initial journey. So the process that my firm has is that to be an employee network is quite a formal thing. It's a capital E and a capital N in our world. So you have terms of reference, you get sponsorship from the leadership of the firm, you get a budget, so resources are given. You have to commit to provide certain things over an annual period, so you know two or three events a year. You have to have a minimum number of members, and so on and so on. So it's it's a structured thing, and which is a good thing, right, because you, you do get, do get resources for that, to do that, which is, um, obviously good, but you don't, just, you can't just to do that, which is obviously good, but you can't just walk into that straight away. You have to build up a community to show that you have a case for satisfying the criteria for an employee network.

Speaker 4: 38:12

So the step that we're going through now is to build up that community to attract sufficient interest, and that's all about advertising, raising awareness using all the platforms that we have. We've got pop-up stands planned for outside the cafeterias and the restaurants in our headquarters building over the next couple of weeks. This is all leading up to the launch event for the community. I can't call it a network yet. We have to apply to be a network. This is building up the community. So we have a humanists in kpmg launch event, uh, under the humanist in business banner, um, on the 24th of april this year. So, um, I'm really excited about that. So the the main purpose of that is to attract people who who are either already humanist or who may align themselves with the humanistic worldview or just want to know more about it or, frankly, um, want to see the people that we've got coming as guest speakers.

Speaker 4: 39:07

we have a couple of high profile patrons um attending yeah, and I'm really, really pleased we've been able to do it so uh. So I hope after that we will have the community. We'll then quickly move to a formal employee network.

Speaker 1: 39:22

Absolutely yeah, so. So I guess that's that's one bit of advice for anyone looking to start or join a community.

Speaker 4: 39:28

Even at the very least, you might get some some top speakers from the Humanist UK patrons, which is what I was about to say, I think, practically speaking, what if somebody were to say I'd like to start my organization, but I don't know what to do? What's the first thing I should do to try and build up some interest. Humanist uk have some fabulous events that are open to um, you know people who are not already members darwin lecture, the rosalind franklin lecture, the voltaire lecture, um, you know, three or four times a year there are big events that are not about humanism per se, that they're about, you know, high profile leading thinkers and scientists talking about their work. Uh, so it's absolutely fascinating and I'm sure you've been, james, so you'll, you'll know.

Speaker 4: 40:07

But, um, I, I, I have taken colleagues from the office to the events as guests and, um, that's such a great way to to attract people and to get them interested and to actually realize. You know, know, this is I, this is, this is how I think, this is how I think, and, and I'm one of these people Um, that's how I felt when I first got involved with humans UK. I felt like I'd come home.

Speaker 1: 40:32

I'd actually found, you know, my, my group, as it were it's such a common story, isn't it that that thing, people, when they, when they kind of hear what it, what humanism, is about, um and uh, and I do think the engaging with people, I think the events and also ceremonies tend to be the two places where most people realize that's what they are. It's not really a conversion, it's just a realization. Yeah, um, so yeah, and practically, do you have any tips for anybody uh listening who might be interested either to start a group within a large corporate organization or, if they're an independent worker like myself, in a smaller organization? You know how best to get involved with the Humanists in Business network.

Speaker 4: 41:16

But I think, james, it's as simple as get in touch with us, because I think, as I said right at the start, we're on an outreach process, really trying to connect with organizations who are wanting to do that. So we'd absolutely love to hear from people who want to do that. And how we help and how it progresses is a function of practicalities and what's available. How it progresses is a function of practicalities and what's available and and you know, I think the organization's features are, as I've said about my own firm, were, that's what drove, how we did, what we did and what we're doing, and the same will be true in any other organization. So I think it's an initial conversation about the facts of where you are, what's the organization, how big you know what would work, what wouldn't work, how do we help you, how do we work together. That's the kind of conversation I would, I would encourage and, just to make it clear, we're absolutely open to be contacted to have that discussion.

Speaker 1: 42:09

Absolutely, and we'll include the links in the show notes. Yeah, please, the LinkedIn page we have a LinkedIn group and we're getting ourselves set up on other social media, so, but the best place I would say to start would be the linkedin group and reach out to yourself, paul, and the other steer co uh to get in touch. Finally, you mentioned uh briefly that you've got the kickoff event with kpmg soon, um would you like to share any any more details on on that event or any other activities? Um, or what we'd like to do going forward with the humanists in business network?

Speaker 4: 42:40

yeah, in terms of the event, it's a KPMG event, so it's other than a handful of people from Humanists UK and the Humanists in Business Leadership Network. It's not open to external people, and that's necessary because this is about KPMG. We've got free use of really high quality presentation suite and equipment because it's a KPMG event, right. So it's not actually open to external people. So I apologize for that, but there are good reasons why that's the case, I think.

Speaker 4: 43:13

Looking forward I mean, as you know, we're in the early stages of planning our strategy and practical objectives for the next 12, 18, 24 months, so my focus is let's make this event as good as it can be, at least to get the KPMG network event and use that as a blueprint to go to other larger organizations and try and repeat that, if we can. Ultimately, my ambition is to have a humanist in business annual event, like the darwin day lecture, like the rosalind franklin lecture, where we can get really really high profile business leaders to come and talk to a big audience about really really important business things, things that resonate with the humanistic worldview. And we've talked about AI, right. So there are some significant leaders in technology and AI. It would be fascinating, wouldn't it to get somebody a keynote speaker and attract a big audience to that every year. So that's one of my ambitions anyway for them.

Speaker 1: 44:18

Absolutely yeah, and I know there's lots of very interesting topics. Ai is, as you say, front and center climate change, dei, working practices, future work, potentially shifting to the four-day work week. There's so many interesting topics that are happening and I think so many are connected to what we're doing and what we're advocating for here at Humanist UK and our groups we're advocating for here here at, uh yeah, uh, humanist uk, and and our and our groups, um. So that's so congratulations and and um, well done on relaunching the group. I'm really looking forward to being part of it and I would strongly recommend um any members across the uk if they'd like to get involved.

Speaker 1: 44:54

Our initial couple events will be in london. We'll be posting and sharing information here, but we are keen to launch as well chapters and have local chapters throughout the UK and, of course, for our international listeners. If you'd like to still join the group and engage, we'd be happy to advise on setting up other national groups for professional humanists. So, paul, just before we go, our standard closing question um, what's something that you've changed your mind on?

Speaker 4: 45:21

recently. Can I have two goes at it. One is well, they're both real examples. One is quite trivial, I suppose, anyway, and the other one is a bit a bit more dry but important to me, and the first one is books versus kindles. Uh, I swore I would never use a kindle. I thought I'm a lover of books. I had lots of books around me most of the time I thought kindles were the devil's work. I would never use one. The tangible book that you had in your hand, you know the all that kind of stuff. I I now use a kindle. I would not be without my kindle, and I've got many fewer books in the house than I used to have. Um, yeah, so that's something I thought.

Speaker 4: 46:01

I thought I've never changed my mind on, but I but I ended up doing that a bit more, a bit more dry, I suppose, but yeah, when we talk about humanists being evidence-based and rational thinking, and when I did my postgraduate research degree, I wanted to really immerse myself in the quantitative research method, using numbers and statistics way that you could make conclusions that were robust about, about things, and I was very, um, disrespectful of the qualitative research methodologies that are also out there, which are all about talking to people, getting stories, um, learning about lived experience and and forming conclusions from from that. I'm not using numbers at all, more or less, and I thought that was ridiculous. But I've changed my view. I don't disrespect numbers, by the way.

Speaker 4: 47:06

I think numbers are supremely important, but I've realized that actually the qualitative world is incredibly important and I've had a really recent example in my world of tax where the government issued some data to make a case that the tax profession should be regulated important.

Speaker 4: 47:14

And I've had a really recent example in my world of tax where the government issued some data to make a case that the tax profession should be regulated because there was poor behavior around the profession. And I started picking away at the statistics and I could. I could think about the numbers, what they were saying, about what I'd seen in my world, and I realized that actually every single data point on the data table could be unpacked with its own story and it would tell you a different story and the numbers on their own, whilst saying what numbers always say, yeah, um didn't, didn't tell you the full truth. So that sounds rather dry and technical, but in my, in my head, it was a major, major switch for me to me to open my mind to the value of qualitative evidence when making decisions and not just being snooty about numbers.

Speaker 1: 48:06

Absolutely and certainly if you want to influence change or change minds.

Speaker 4: 48:10

It's Pointing at numbers and saying 0.05% significance.

Speaker 1: 48:15

It doesn't really get you very far in the real world well, paul Harrison, thank you so much and best of luck with everything with the Humanists in Business Network. We will be sharing more updates on the channel very soon, but thank you for joining us on Humanism Now. Thank you, welcome back to Humanism Now and thank you once again to Paul Harrison for that fantastic interview and, on a personal level, everything he's been doing in building the Humanists in Business Network. It's been great to be involved so far and, if anyone listening is keen to get involved, we are looking to build a multi-skilled, diverse team across the UK. So whatever skills, whatever experience you have, please do get in touch. We'd be delighted to work with you in growing the Humanists in Business network. I'm interested to know, reflecting on what Paul had to share there Christian, do you think we should advocate for humanist values at work or within our place of work?

Speaker 3: 49:10

Oh, absolutely, and first of all, thanks to Paul. It was an excellent interview and I'll definitely be checking out the network myself in more detail. Yes, absolutely. I think this steps straight into the ever-growing discussion we have about business ethics, as in what is the difference between the pure Friedman doctrine that businesses are just about making money and all of these new models such as DI, esg, integrated reporting, donut economics?

Speaker 3: 49:39

And I think, as humanists, one way of doing activism is doing it from the inside and being very clear that we have certain values that we would wish to see change within the organizations, would wish to see change within the organizations.

Speaker 3: 49:57

One thing, of course, that you have to take in mind when you start raising your voice within the organization is that it can be dangerous. It can be something that threatens your career, and we can see that with a lot of unions at the moment, where that's almost become a dirty word, even though in most countries, unions aren't even considered a form of activism, but a self-evident and legally protected part of simply being in the business world. So I think it's very much important that we, as humanists, also engage in this sort of blended economic model, like I did my master's in social entrepreneurship, so I've been interested in these topics for a long time. I've been interested in these topics for a long time, and not just for humanism and activism, but for the again environmental survival of the planet. We need to get the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit more in sync and stop treating infinite growth as possible on a finite planet.

Speaker 1: 50:54

It does tie back to what we mentioned earlier about, about activism and, um, yeah, I I, the concern you flag, I think is is very real as well, this idea.

Speaker 1: 51:05

I've certainly felt it and I think, when I speak with those who are part of the humanist in business network as well, that there is still that slight concern, that being that, there is still that slight concern, that being that it could be either misunderstood or potentially, some people may just not like the concept of humanism and that could be detrimental to someone's career.

Speaker 1: 51:25

But I think this is where the idea of representation really matters, and the more people who are openly not just open about who they are themselves, but also potential allies, they may not be identify themselves as humanists but also say no, I'm, I'm, I understand this, I know what it means and I'm perfectly accepting of of that belief system or supportive of the network. And I must say, I think, in our initial first steps in with our launch events that we've done, um, we have found that to be the case that most people are either curious or, um, supportive, um. There will always be some, I think, who are going to be of a particular mind that they, they, they don't want to associate with it, but I think, I think over time that's likely to change as well. Um, aj, I know you're also similarly in an entrepreneurial role in business, so, um, what's your view on the whole concept of bringing your whole self to work, and should there be limits on that?

Speaker 2: 52:24

Yes, absolutely. Bloom where you're planted and, I think, bloom as your whole self wherever you are. If we increase the surface area that's exposed to the rest of society that humanism has to offer, then it's more likely that, as you say, people will get curious or, if not curious, at least be exposed to some humanist ideas, and that could then lead them on to either becoming humanist or at least humanist allies. So I think that increasing that surface area that humanism has available and exposed to rest of society and making us more sticky in more places, and not just on the on the protest marches, not just on you know, the environmental recycling and litter picking, etc. Charity work, but also in business, also in investments, also in you know what to do with public funds. I mean again going back to scandinavia, norway, fantastic example of their sovereign wealth funds. You, you know just a trillion euros that are just available to use for whatever they want for it to be useful, whereas the UK, you know that's our commons, our public spaces and what we have as commons for the people to take forward as their inheritance, not just for my family, but what our collective inheritance and our descendants will gain in the generations. Going forward is very, very poor.

Speaker 2: 53:41

Also, talking about being an activist at work. This is in the we're talking in the climate and the context of the past year, especially with a government that's very hostile to refugees of the government, spreading this nonsense about activist lawyers or leftist lawyers or somehow people that are, even though it's actually part of their professional duty. If their professional duty is a bit too close to conflicting with government policy, they're vilified, and let alone even if it's outside of their professional duty, but they use their professional pedestal or their position or their status to advocate for something. We talked about advocacy being an important part of activism earlier. Even if they do that, then again they're vilified even more. You know, enemies of the people. We had high court judges, supreme Court judges, vilified as enemies of the people.

Speaker 2: 54:25

This is not activism, this is just doing your job. You know God forbid you actually then bring some other parts of yourself, maybe your humanism, your other philosophies, your values, into work. So no, I mean, we spend most of our, many of us spend most of our time at work and maybe, post pandemic, we're at home now, but so for many people they have to physically be present in a workspace, especially the lower income part of society. So you spend so much time of your life at work and we believe in democracy and accountability. Why shouldn't we have democracy at work, why shouldn't we have accountability there, why shouldn't we have humanist principles at play there?

Speaker 2: 55:01

And I think Paul is an excellent example of blooming where you're planted. I mean he's advised on ethical tax issues, compliance there. Tax is a big problem. I mean, my German friends say in Germany we don't have charity and NGOs as much as we just pay our taxes. German friends say in Germany, you know, we don't have charity and NGOs as much as we just pay our taxes, whereas in you know, in the UK, tax haven many parts of it. So I think that's whether you're in finance, whichever industry you're in business generally, I think there's a big open goal there and that the ceiling is quite high for us to grow into. So I'm very happy to support the humanists in business network and humanists in tech and everything else that can burgeon off of this as well.

Speaker 1: 55:38

Kind of gives a bit of an indication of not just your values, your morality, but I guess how you can be reasoned with as well. If you sort of are open about being a humanist, then if someone is. I often think one of the main areas that this should be it's effective is in our decision making process, as you say. Are we being democratic? Are we actually listening to everyone who's involved, um, or going to be impacted or may have an area of expertise that perhaps hasn't been considered because of where they sit in the hierarchy of the business? And I think if we, if we really do try to promote humanist values, that more scientific reasoning and understanding and also the potential effects to all parties that are involved, then you might see businesses make different decisions as well, um, and have that more sustainable growth, um, and and more ethical practices you mentioned the, the scientific method and an empirical way of approaching decision making there.

Speaker 2: 56:35

That's reminding me of again another initiative that paul's been involved with that I've I've been following, is an alternative to peer review, which is called critical friendships, again within the humanistic management network.

Speaker 2: 56:46

Of course we need peer review that there are some improvements that can be made there. But in science, in academia, having mentorship and critical friendships that are there in a humanistic way, that's moving away from the corporatization of impact factors and publication bias, which is a big albatross around the neck of scientific endeavor, which enemies of science often use. So there's room for radical innovation as well. We're not just sort of fixing things that are broken, we're also laying out a path for how we can improve on what science has achieved so far in the past few hundred years since the Enlightenment, where we don't have to be again. We question the power structures and corporate influence that is eroding humanist principles in business and in organizations generally, in trade unions, as Christian said before, in other residence associations and just other civic society in general. So this hopefully will not just be limited to business but it will be a fire starter for humanism spreading more widely.

Speaker 1: 57:46

The types of companies that we have or organizations or institutions are going to change radically in the next, in the coming generation, most certainly because of the impact of technology. So it's a chance actually to influence not just change but the creation of new organizations and institutions from the ground up and instill some of these values from their inception.

Speaker 3: 58:13

One of the things that Paul mentioned was a change in hierarchies and how he had gone from the more quantitative to the qualitative engagement with people, which basically, I think is what we need to assist in, is the move from the very utilitarian business ethics to maybe based more on the you know, habermas' discourse ethics, as in in order to do good, everyone must be able to speak, and if you don't have a situation where people can speak, that's the situation you start with that improvement must be put in place before you can start calculating imaginary numbers about income and outcome. So that brings us that psychological safety that he also said that humanism is one of the let's say, less persecuted, at least in the West labels you can put on yourself. So if we stand tall and say we are humanists, that could create that psychological safety for other people to be able to participate in the discourse if they have a label that is more often attacked.

Speaker 1: 59:15

It's such an important, important area, this one of psychological safety, and actually um can link to another interview I've done recently with uh in this area as well for a different podcast channel, um, because I think it can get misunderstood, but actually, yeah, being feeling safe to speak your mind at work is, I guess, rarer than we think and also far more important to people's overall happiness and well-being. I recently heard a study that showed there were three things that would indicate how well someone performs at work, and they were. One, was their work respected? Secondly, were they respected as an individual? And thirdly, do you have a best friend at work? And so these are three things to look out for and I think, as you say, that psychological safety for people to be open and be themselves and feel as though they are valued is really important.

Speaker 2: 1:00:06

There was a Gallup poll, I think, maybe in 2017, that said, maybe 85 to 89% of people are not engaged in what they would call engaged at work. They're just sort of there, you know, going through the motions. They're not contributing in any sort of you know future building capacity, they're not trying to re-envision and that's, and apart from again, scares about you know, activist employees, but really you want to, as you said, james, it's, it's a flag to say, actually, if I have these humanist values and I have these critical thinking values, I have these sort of other things that would make me valuable as someone that is a multidisciplinary person that can actually contribute to the health of a company and trying to achieve those vision and goals for the company too fast, and then having to have a PR agency, come and try to fix your image, and you see all of these sort of all of these companies trying to jump on the bandwagon of whatever it may be. You know Black Lives Matter, or, again, israel, palestine, et cetera. It's much better if you find a sustainable way to grow in a humanistic way that can fit in with the rest of society, rather than being, almost again this kind of corporate capitalist.

Speaker 2: 1:01:14

You know cancerous growth almost again, this kind of corporate capitalist. You know cancerous growth Naomi Klein has written about this extensively that it's just going to end up consuming the host, and I think it's very well on the way there. And having humanists in business, humanist employees, the engines of our so-called state capitalist economy. They are businesses and we spend so much of our time working there in our workspaces, online or offline, so they need to be democratized. They are businesses and we spend so much of our time working there in our workspaces, online or offline, so they need to be democratized. They need to be humanized.

Speaker 1: 1:01:40

Fantastic, and I think there's plenty more to discuss in this area, so watch this space for more news from the humanists in business. Now, before we go this week, our final question to the panel to ask one of our panel members if there's something they have changed their mind about recently. And I'm going to be unfair to our newest member, christian, and put him on the spot immediately, christian, what is something you've changed your mind about and what influenced the change?

Speaker 3: 1:02:04

Well, not so much change directly, but more sort of reconsidered.

Speaker 3: 1:02:08

At the moment we had some really good days. There was a talk about Earth Day and there was one about AI, and in both cases I remember the concept called post-humanism that I dipped into many years ago but then remembered, and it's sort of not completely similar for transhumanism. But whereas transhumanism is often, humanity is special and must continue becoming even more special. Post-humanism does not disagree with that that we are smart apes. But it's more that there's a sort of religious legacy in the all importance of humans that we are put on Earth and it is for us to do with the planet and all of the rest of life on that planet as we want. So to step away from our sort of high opinion of ourselves and say if we are smart, then we should go beyond the humanistic understanding of the past, go also end up destroying ourselves. So that means that, similar to earth, they will have to protect the earth, but also, as came up with the ai talk, that it will be about protecting other forms of intelligences as well if we accept that.

Speaker 1: 1:03:28

humans, yeah, we are special to a certain degree, but we are not the end, all and be all that sounds like a huge topic that we would need a whole new episode to dive into, so we will definitely get that on the agenda.

Speaker 3: 1:03:41

If people search for it, they will find many, many different branches, and of course I cannot support all of the branches you'll find. There are some quite spicy ones out there.

Speaker 1: 1:03:50

Yes, I think there's quite a broad range of views. Well, fantastic, thank you for sharing, christian, and welcome once again to the panel. Before we go, aj any events you'd like to highlight.

Speaker 2: 1:03:59

Thanks James, thanks Christian. A pleasure to join you today. A few things to highlight from my end. One is, as I said before, we've got the Humanist UK Convention coming up. Next month there will be a Young Humanist Social, so watch out for that.

Speaker 2: 1:04:19

Humanist UK members who get an email about that, or if you're not a member but you're following us on socials, we'll announce that shortly and that will be on the weekend of the convention. It may clash with the quite boring gala dinner, but I would encourage you not to go to that. The past two years of experience shows that we have much more fun. So please join us at the young humanist Social at the convention that's in mid-June. On May, the 28th Humanist International, on the 28th of May we're having an advocacy workshop run by our advocacy team, liz O'Casey and Leon Langdon. Liz, especially, is someone that I admire very much and has a huge amount of experience the Human Rights Council, the EU, just left, right and centre, so her talking about how Humanist International is tackling freedom of expression, freedom of original belief issues at that international level, really at the cutting edge and where we're taking our diplomacy. It's a workshop, but also, if you're new to the topic, please do join. If you go to humanistinternational, you can sign up for that.

Speaker 1: 1:05:18

Fantastic. Thank you, and Christian. How can listeners get involved with the activism and campaign group?

Speaker 3: 1:05:26

Well, they should sign up to our excellent events where they can find it. They're both a meetup. We have a website and we are very active on WhatsApp, and that will probably be where you can find the first engagements and hopefully, as they grow, we might reach out to other organizations to collaborate with. Fingers crossed.

Speaker 1: 1:05:44

Thank you, Christian, and best of luck with launching the new initiative. And a reminder all listeners if you are enjoying the podcast, please do rate, review and share. It really helps us spread the positive word of humanism and, if you'd like to, you can support us on Patreon. Thank you to our latest supporter, Deborah Hinton, who has signed up this week, Very grateful and looking forward to engaging with you as part of the community. New members can join us and support online. You can follow us on all social media platforms and find out about our events on Meetup and, if you wish, join our WhatsApp community. And thank you for joining us this week on Humanism. Now.