Upcoming Meetings

Welcome

Up to now we have had a busy month; the Humanists UK Holyoake lecture delivered by Douglas Murray took place in Manchester on 3 October and was well attended. The group also marked the 25th Anniversary of the 're-formation' of Greater Manchester Humanists at the Central Manchester meeting on 11 October. We have an interesting array of offerings for the months of October and November which cover Humanist specific topics as well as topical issues; we will explore Utilitarianisms, one of the founding tenets of Humanism at the Central Manchester Meeting in November and Britain's changing religion and belief landscape will form the topic of discussion at the Stockport meeting in November.

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Upcoming Meetings

GMH and Sunday Assembly Book Club

The next club meeting will take place on Thursday 2Novemberat 7.30pm at The Wonder Inn, 29 Shudehill, M4 2AF. November's book is non-fiction:

With Ash on their Faces by Cathy Otten and outlines the experience of the Yezidis at the hands of IS.

The details of the book are posted on

The meeting is free but attendees are expected to buy a drink.

Oldham

The next meeting will take place at 2.00pmon Saturday 21October.The group will have an informal discussion on the basic ideas of Humanism. The meeting will take place at the Rhode Island Cafe

Spindles Shopping Centre, Oldham OL1 1HD. There is no charge to attend but attendees are expected to buy a drink. All are welcome!

Stockport Humanists

The next meeting will take place at 7.30pm on Wednesday18 October. Dr Sarah Ryan, a Neuroscientist from the University of Manchester, will deliver a talk to the group on the topic of Dementia.

Sarah will give a broad overview of dementia and on frontotemporal dementia,the specific type of dementia that she works with. She will also talk about one of her projects, the techniques she uses and she will share some of her data. Sarah’s talk will be preceded by a short AGM.

The November meeting on 15 of the month will be delivered by Jeremy Rodell, the Dialogue Officer of Humanists UK. He will discuss the topic "Britain's Changing Religion and Belief Landscape" exploring the facts relating to this trend and ways in which Humanist can respond.

The meetings will take place in the back room at the Boars Head, 2 Vernon Street, SK1 1TY (near the Market Place). There is a £2 charge (free for first timers).

The group’s next afternoon socialwill take place on Wednesday25 Octoberat 2.30pm at the Rhode Island Coffee Bar, 2 Little Underbank, Stockport, SK1 1JT.

Humanist Discussion Group

Do you enjoy exploring contemporary social, political and philosophical themes? If so,why not join GMH at their monthly discussion forum in Central Manchester! The next meeting of the group will be held on Tuesday, 21November. Notes for the meeting will be posted on The meeting will take place at The Waterhouse, 67-71 Princess Street, Manchester, M2 4EG at 8.15pm in one of the quieter spaces in the pub. The event is free but attendees are expected to buy a drink.

Humanists UK School Speakers Training

Humanists UKare looking for volunteers to visit schools to deliver talks on Humanism. The organisation offerstraining on planning and delivering talks, assemblies, and workshops. Further information about training as a school volunteer can be found on the Humanists UK Groups Hub

Training courses will be taking place on Saturday 21 October 2017 from 9am to 5pmat LeedsCityAcademy, Bedford Field, Woodhouse Cliff, Leeds, LS6 2LG and on Saturday 18 November 2017 from9am to 5pm at a venue yet to be agreed in theWest Midlands, most likelyBirmingham. Applications are invited to express an interest in attending on one of the specified courses or a future event by completing the following application form

Further training courses will be organised in the coming months at locations according to expressions of interest. Any questions relating to the programme should be directed to Luke Donnellan at

GMH Member Profiles

Name:

Robin Grinter

Do you consider yourself to be a Humanist?

I am very happy to think of myself as a Humanist, both intellectually in terms of my ideas about living and in my values.

Were you a member of another belief system before?

I was brought up in the Church of England, taught in Sunday School and even played the organ for services (but not at all well, so not very often).

What made you leave that belief system and associate yourself with Humanism?

I abandoned Christianity at University because I came to realise that I didn’t believe in the supernatural - and also because a very intense fellow undergraduate tried and spectacularly failed to ‘re-convert‘ me. This showed me how intrusive religion can be, but it took a long time before I realised that there is a fully satisfying alternative.

How long have you been a member of Greater Manchester Humanists?

I’ve been a member of GMH since 2004, joining to gain support to make a more effective contribution as the Humanist member of Manchester’s Standing Advisory Council of Religious Education where I had been a member representing the BHA since 1986. I’d actually resigned two years before, but with support from GMH rejoined in 2009 and made it my purpose from then on to use my experience as a teacher to promote Humanism, particularly in schools.

What Greater Manchester Humanist activities do you enjoy doing and why?

I enjoy every aspect of the work I do for education – teaching the course’ Exploring Humanism’ that I wrote in 2009, organising and contributing to the teaching of Humanism in schools as regional coordinator for Humanists UK, writing and developing the ‘Humanist Supplement’ to local RE syllabuses as a support for RE teachers, and most important of all the enjoyment of working with Humanist friends and colleagues, especially Anna Whitehead and David Milne. I’ve been a teacher all my life at various levels, so my connections with Humanism have enabled me to continue my contacts with schools, students and teachers in a wonderfully rewarding way.

What book(s) are you reading at the moment and how are you finding it?

At present I’m reading ‘Homo Deus’, Yuval Noah Harari’s survey of potential developments for humanity that follows up his quite original thematic treatment of human history in ‘Sapiens’. I found ‘Sapiens’ gave me a new take on the driving forces of development in history (empire, religion and money), and ‘Homo Deus’ is opening my eyes to the ways in which genetic engineering may take us, or our descendants, step by step into a ‘post-human’ future.

What are your hobbies?

My hobbies are hill-walking (more like valley-walking nowadays to be truthful), gardening (growing on a strip of land on a smallholding on Marple Ridge large quantities of basic crops like potatoes that I have some confidence may come up successfully), watching T20 cricket at Old Trafford now that I am positively of no use on the cricket field myself, and reading when I can find some spare time.

If you could have one person (alive or dead) to dinner, who would you have and why?

My dinner companion would, no surprises, be Nelson Mandela for all the obvious reasons, including the few minutes I spent inside his cell on RobbenIsland during a trip to South Africa.

Can you provide one interesting fact about yourself?

One interesting fact for those who have to cope with the endless series of mishaps and minor disasters that accompany me, is that despite demonstrating why the mountains in the Lake District are called ‘Fells’ every time I walked on them (especially downhill) I never even twisted an ankle in 25 years. I wore good boots: I must have some good sense after all.

Adventures in Anonymous

In a series running over a number of months, Stefan Cooper, GMH member, will outline his experiences and observations of anonymous organisations, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) as pseudo religious organisations with cultish tendencies. Up to now Stefan has described how he became immersed in the anonymous’ world, the strains of working for a rehab organisation and the fundamental flaws associated with the 12 steps programme. In the fourth instalment, Stefan outlines his criticism of the Anonymous model.

Criticisms

Co-dependency and people who still go

By the end, hardly anybody I knew over an 8 year period had got clean and stayed clean. The people that did stay clean tended to either stop going to meetings, or went very rarely. I would describe the people I know who still go as somewhere between co-dependent and slavishly devoted to Anonymous in a way that’s unhealthy. Long term members become so reliant on attending meetings above all else, that the very thing that originally solved a problem has become a problem in itself. There is something very strange about people who have been clean for decades but who still frequently go to Anonymous meetings. It seems like the opposite of what a helping organisation would want, which is independence.

Anonymous meetings and guidance say nothing on dealing with the rest of life. Going to a meeting, assuming you aren’t doing much else with your life, is definitely better than nothing. If you are unemployed and need to meet people, then it serves that purpose. However, there is no next level to Anonymous in regards to what to do next. The central take away message from a meeting is that you need to keep going to more meetings, and if you don’t you are likely to relapse. By constantly being around profoundly damaged and chaotic people, meetings don’t provide anyone with any social skills that would act as bridge back to the real world.

The few people I still speak to who still attend Anonymous meetings all have common traits. They have seen the same things I have, but still go. They complain about chaotic meetings, the 13th steppers, the endless relapses, but still go. It doesn’t seem to be something they enjoy anymore and resent going, but still go. They will privately agree with me that Anonymous is not what it says it is, and has dangerous cult like elements to it. But they still go. I’ve even had people promise to quit Anonymous meetings, but the next time I call they can’t speak as they are in a meeting.

The saddest situations I experience with truly co-dependent people are when I encounter relapsed clients, ex-friends, and even ex-colleagues back living on the street and using as much as ever. They have been attending Anonymous meetings on and off for possibly ten years or more, and nothing seems to have changed, but they still keep going.

There’s a recovery-speak slogan that I think of in these situations which is “Don’t leave five minutes before the miracle happens!” I’ve seen that slogan written in foot high letters on the walls of rehabs. Another prime example of recovery-speak is “There are a lot of miracles in the world of recovery”. The implication is that the magic thing that takes away your troubles is just around the corner, and you don’t want to leave and miss it. I think that somewhere along the way anonymous breeds the idea that Anonymous itself will provide the miracle and you don’t have to do anything yourself.

What meetings are really like

Meetings are nothing like any fictional portrayal I have ever seen on TV. Whatever you may think they are like, it’s not like that. There’s no character at the front raising the roof with inspirational speeches. There is no wise counsellor facilitating a discussion like a self-help group. There’s no advice, questioning, or back-and-forth conversation at all.

There’s good reason for this. Addicts are chaotic, agitated, and deeply angry people not well versed in polite and well-reasoned debate. Debate is the last thing you want in a room full of addicts as it inevitably leads to disagreement. Disagreement leads to everybody present having an opinion. Everybody expressing an opinion takes up a lot of time and the original point is easily lost. That leads to everyone talking over each other or walking out, which leads to shouting. Once the shouting starts, in a male dominated room, nobody wants to back down. So, in the interests of calm, it’s best everybody sticks to the themes I previously described.

If you attend meetings for a year or two, you will eventually see minor tiffs escalate into explosive arguments. The lack of discussion or questioning during meetings creates a surface level atmosphere of what’s called “serenity”. The newcomer would initially think everybody present is in complete agreement with each other, but it’s definitely not like that. In practice, you can be sat in a meeting with somebody who you can be absolutely certain is lying but can’t interrupt to correct them. As no share can be challenged, members can present an image of themselves that’s completely fictitious. For example, you might know full well that a member is using, but if they say they are five years clean, nobody can say a word. As I got to know people better over a period of years, what they said in meetings as compared to the reality of their lives sounded delusional. This happens all the time, and of course the newcomer has no way of knowing this.

There’s also a huge difference between big city meetings, where there may be 50 ever changing people present, and small town meetings where there might be 10 or less. Small town or remote meetings will often be the exact same group of people meeting each other possibly several times a week. These meetings were some of the most “twilight zone” like experiences I’ve ever had.

There’s a tendency for the one dominant member to take over and turn the meeting into something that’s part social club, part lecture. Maybe there’s one long-term clean member and lots of newbie’s, so the meeting looks like acolytes before the guru trying to get his attention. The worst case I saw of that was one member with 37 sponsors, and the meeting was mainly given over to the guy managing his week’s diary to fit in time with them all. Another dynamic is the one woman with ten men in the room, with the female playing all the men off against each other. There are all kinds of weirdness, and once I got out and started speaking to other ex-members I found that it was the same everywhere.

The strangest meeting I ever went to had members interviewing people in the lobby to check they were real addicts before they were allowed in. Inside was a man with a register who wrote down everyone’s names recorded their attendance in a book, like a school register. People could only speak if the chairperson asked them to, and only about the subject he chose. People applauded “shares” that were particularly confessional. Again, when I spoke to other people that left it’s a general rule that this is how it goes; the smaller and more remote the meeting, the weirder it gets.

Anybody can start, run, organise, and chair a meeting however they like. There’s no hierarchical organisation in Anonymous, each meeting is a law onto itself. Extraordinarily weird/ predatory/ mentally ill people are given complete control with no vetting, standards, or inspection from anybody else. All you have to do is book a room in your local community centre, say you know what you are doing, and you will be listed as an official Anonymous meeting organiser. You could do that today, and have people turn up to your meeting tomorrow. If you had a bad experience and wanted to complain, there’s nowhere to complain to, and nobody could be effectively barred anyway; the really psychotic members just move on to another meeting in another town.

Recovery speak

The language used when people “share” is hard to describe, but it’s worth explaining as it’s a significant part of Anonymous. There are countless slogans, truisms, metaphors, analogies, and self-help pseudo philosophy phrases that you hear repeated at Anonymous meeting the world over and I call these “recovery speak”. I’ve no idea why, but AA in particular love metaphors. For instance, you won’t hear “Don’t go to the pub as you will have a drink sooner or later”. Instead it will be a metaphor of “If you sit in the barber’s chair long enough, eventually you will have a haircut”. Recovery speakdeserves to be named as a separate language as it’s unlike anything you would hear in the real world.

An example of recovery speak would be “Things happen for a reason”. A member might share that their relapse happened for a reason, as it led to a renewed commitment to Anonymous which sounds wise and deep. It sounds like the relapse is part of a journey that has meaning. As it’s axiomatic, it’s impossible to argue with. Obviously anything that happens has causation behind it. My car won’t start if I don’t fill up with petrol, if I stick to my diet I lose weight, etc. However simply stating that things happen because other things happen is not what it means in recovery speak. It’s an unspoken implication that God exists, and a very specific variety of God.