Talks & Lectures
Science and NonDuality
Thu 20 Jun 2013, 19.00
Peter Lloyd presents
Science and NonDuality
Discussion of the nature of the conscious mind.
Is it possible to establish a bridge between the Western, scientific understanding of the brain and mind, and the Eastern - especially Vedantic - notion that reality is ultimately an ineffable nonduality, while the manifest world is an illusion? The discussion covers: the modern debate on consciousness (cf David Chalmers); Western idealism (George Berkeley); Eastern idealism (Shankara); and whether the nature of reality is amenable to ratiocinative investigation or whether it must hand over to mysticism.
Each session will consist of a 45 minute presentation by Peter B Lloyd, followed by up to two hours of structured discussion.
Lectures starting on the 20th & 28th June 2013 in the Bertrand Russell Room.
Entry: £7
For any queries please email: peter.b.lloyd@fencroft.com
Shenanigans!
Fri 21 Jun 2013, 19.30
GALHA presents
SHENANIGANS! Gay Men Mess With Genre
Earlier this year Obverse Books published a short story collection titled 'Shenanigans! Gay Men Mess With Genre'.
Several of the authors will be reading out their contributions to the book, including:
JOSEPH LIDSTER has written scripts for radio and television, including episodes of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. He is currently working on scripts for other TV projects as well as a micro-budget film. You can follow him on twitter at twitter.com/joelidster.
JONATHAN KEMP was born in Manchester and lives in London. His first novel, London Triptych, won the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. A collection of prose poems, Twentysix, was published in 2011, and his second novel, All There Is + All There Is Not, is forthcoming in 2014 (all published by Myriad Editions). He teaches creative writing and comparative literature at Birkbeck.
RUPERT SMITH is the author of several novels, including the Stonewall Award winning Man's World. He has written genre fiction of various types under various names, notably erotica as James Lear (including the best-selling The Back Passage) and blockbusting 'women's fiction' as Rupert James. For over twenty years he was a journalist, contributing to dailies, weeklies and monthlies; for eight years he was a TV critic for The Guardian. He lives in London.
NICK CAMPBELL is an administrator and research student living in London. He blogs about books at leaf-pile.blogspot.co.uk, and in 2010 and 2011 was a judge of the Green Carnation Prize for great modern gay writing.
With more to be announced.
The readings will be followed by a discussion about gay men and genre fiction.
Sauniere Society - In Memory of John Millar
Sat 22 Jun 2013, 9.30
Sauniere Society Meeting - In Memory of John Millar
12th November 1929 – 23rd June 2012
Chairman of the Sauniere Society, Philosopher and Seeker of Truth
Dr. Robert Lomas – Physicist and author of a number of books on Freemasonry and esoteric subjects including ‘The Hiram Key’, ‘The Second Messiah’, Nikola Tesla’ and ‘The Lost Key’. He will lecture on ‘The Understanding of Symbolism’.
Dr. Helen Nicholson – Chair of the History department at the University of Cardiff, is a leading authority on The Templars and author of some of the more accurate books and publications on Templar History, will give a dissertation that helps sort Truth from common misunderstanding about the original Templars.
Hugh Thomas – International forensic surgeon and author with unique research and information on Hitler, Himmler and Hesse will present his views on Rudolph Hesse – his beliefs, motives, capture and incarceration.
Terry Boardman – Author of ‘Mapping the Millenium – behind the plans of the New World Order’ will introduce his new book ‘Kasper Hauser – where did he come from?’ a question Rudolph Steiner asked in the last month of his life, with an amazing answer.
To book contact: The Secretary, Sauniere Society, Arpinge Court, Arpinge, Folkestone, Kent, CT18 8AQ. Tel:07842 426751 or email:
saunieresociety@thought.globalnet.co.uk
Starting from 9.30am until about 5pm - £35 including lunch (members £30 plus a discount on book purchases – new and second hand including a sale of some rare books). Places are limited so early booking is advisable.
Sunday Lecture: The Driller, the Banker and the Minister. Tom Rubens
Sun 23 Jun 2013, 11.00
The Driller, the Banker and the Minister. Tom Rubens
A huge power-nexus exists in Britain between the fossil fuel industries, the big banks and central government. This oligarchical network is a fundamental threat to democracy. Can it be combatted only by a truly radical political initiative?
Tom Rubens is a long-standing member of the Conway Hall Ethical Society and a regular contributor to the Ethical Record. He has worked in the Conway Hall Library & Archives in collating and editing the Conway Memorial Lectures to the present day.
11.00, £3 on the door/free to members
Tea & Coffee will be available.
Event Page
Sunday Lecture: Spirits on the Brain
Sun 30 Jun 2013, 11.00
Spirits on the brain: Insights from psychology and neuroscience
Belief in spirits can be found in all human societies and a substantial proportion of the population claim to have had direct contact with a spiritual realm beyond ordinary experience. This talk presents an overview of scientific research into sleep paralysis, near-death/out-of-body experiences and reincarnation claims in support of the claim that such topics can be understood without recourse to paranormal explanations.
Chris French is a Professor of Psychology and Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association and former editor of The Skeptic.
11.00, £3 on the door/free to members
Bottomless Tea & Coffee will be available.
The School of Life: Brené Brown on Courage
3 Jul 2013
Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.
—Brené Brown
Brené Brown returns to The School of Life by hugely popular demand to give her first secular sermon. Our culture teaches us that the courageous are invincible and only the weak are vulnerable. But that state of indestructibility doesn’t exist, argues Dr Brown. It’s a damaging myth. In this profound and playful sermon, she’ll help us see why the ability to live with vulnerability is the “most accurate measure of courage”. It is, she argues, “the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of a fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living.”
To be open to uncertainty and hurt, and honest about our flaws, takes guts. But without it we would never have the bravery to take risks. We’d miss out on the depth of hope, joy and discovery that comes from living life wholeheartedly.
Join the congregation this weekday evening to find out how we can gain more courage to be vulnerable in ways that help us love, parent, collaborate and create.
Tickets £15.00
Sunday Sermon - Carol Dweck on Being Perfect
Sun 7 Jul 2013, 11.30
The School of Life presents...
Sunday Sermon - Carol Dweck on Being Perfect
Striving for self-perfection is considered a high virtue. And, as one of the world’s leading psychologists, we might be assume Carol Dweck is a paragon of self-perfectionism. She was, once. That is, until her lab studies revealed the irony that wanting to be perfect stops people reaching their potential.
Dweck discovered the desire to be perfect comes from having a fixed sense of what it is to be a viable person in the world. The person with the fixed mindset needs constant reassurance that they are fulfilling their set self-image. Anything that might crack that open is rejected. Anything less than flawless feels like too big a risk to their whole being. And that attitude closes the perfectionist off to growth.
On the other hand Dweck found that people with what she calls a growth mindset don’t fear failure and embarrassment in the same way. Where someone with a fixed mindset is afraid to persevere in the face of a setback or big challenge, the growth mindset person jumps in. They see it as an opportunity to develop and grow. That makes growth mindset people potentially more resilient and creative.
Dweck is here to deliver the good news through this secular sermon: the growth mindset can be learnt, and she’ll show us how we can start. We are not all doomed to be perfect.
ABOUT SUNDAY SERMONS
Since 2008 The School of Life has presented strictly secular Sunday Sermons exploring the values we should live by today. We ask maverick cultural figures to give us their take on the virtues to cling to or the vices to be wary of in our complex world.The Sermons take place at Conway Hall. Expect persuasive polemics, pop-song hymns, artist-made buns and biscuits and the possible appearance from the devil himself.
Sunday Lecture: Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde's Nemesis
Sun 7 Jul 2013, 11.00
Marquess of Queensberry
The Marquess of Queensberry is perhaps as famous for his role in the downfall of one of our greatest literary geniuses as he was for helping establish the rules for modern-day boxing. The imprisonment of Oscar Wilde following his romantic interest in the marquess' son, left Wilde a broken man and Queensberry labelled a spiteful and villainous bigot. In this talk Linda Stratmann paints a more complex picture of a man who suffered tragedies of his own and who at the time was considered a radical thinker and a champion of women's rights.
Linda Stratmann is the author of eleven books on crime, fiction and historical biographies including Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion,Notorious Blasted Rascal and Greater London Murders.
11.00, £3 on the door/free to members
Bottomless Tea & Coffee will be available.
Sunday Lecture: Do Atheists have mystical-type experiences?
Sun 14 Jul 2013, 11.00
It is well established that between 30-50% of the population have had at least one experience that could be described as mystical, transformative or enlightening. These experiences frequently have some sort of religious association: they may contain religious imagery; they may be interpreted as having a religious message or they may be understood to come from a divine source. Given that atheists do not believe in supernatural agency and do not use a religious interpretive framework, do atheists ever have these types of experience, and if they do, how do they interpret them and how do they affect an atheist’s life?
Alice Herron is studying for a PhD in Psychology of Religion at Surrey University. She is currently researching the spontaneous, transformative, enlightening and/or mystical type experiences of atheists. In this lecture she outlines the background to her research and presents some preliminary findings.
11.00, £3 on the door/free to members
Tea & Coffee will be available.
Giving Offence: a Brief Guide to Visual Satire
Wed 17 Jul 2013, 19.00
The Central London Humanist Group presents
Giving Offence: a Brief Guide to Visual Satire - a talk by Martin Rowson
We are delighted that Martin Rowson has agreed to give a talk to the Central London Humanist Group. Martin is a multi-award winning cartoonist and writer and is also a trustee of the BHA and an honorary associate of the NSS.
In 2001 Ken Livingstone appointed him London’s first Cartoonist Laureate in exchange for one pint of London Pride per annum. This payment is still six pints in arrears, and despite being apparently reappointed by Boris Johnson, not a single pint has been forthcoming from the current Mayor either. The CLHG are happy to right this shocking injustice.
Door at 6.30 pm for talk at 7.00 p.m.
Please arrive early to have a glass of wine from our CLHG Charity Wine Bar find your seat and chat with other members.
All our talks are open to the general public and free to attend but we ask those who can to make a donation of what they can afford to cover the costs of room and equipment hire and help keep our talks free to all.
Martin's work has appeared regularly in The Guardian, The Times, The Independent on Sunday, The Daily Mirror, The Spectator, The Morning Star and many other publications.
He won the Cartoon Art Trust’s Political Cartoonist of the Year Award in 2000 and 2004 and Caricaturist Award in 2011, and the Political Cartoon Society’s Cartoon of the Year in 2003 and 2007 (and was runner-up in 2012) and was their Cartoonist of Year in 2010. He’s also won the prestigious Premio Satiri de Forte di Marmi International Satire Award in 2006.
His books include comic book versions of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, as well as “Snatches”, a novel, and “Stuff”, a memoir about his late parents and his adoption which was long-listed for the 2007 Samuel Johnson Prize. His other books include “The Dog Allusion: Gods, Pets and How to be Human” and “Fuck: The Human Odyssey” and his updated comic book adaptation of “Gulliver’s Travels” was published in March 2012. Meanwhile, Volume III of “The Limerickiad,”, collected from his long running series retelling world literature in limerick form on the books pages of the Independent on Sunday, is due out in the Autumn of 2013.
In addition to being chairman of the British Cartoonists’ Association, Rowson is also a trustee of the Cartoon Museum, the British Humanist Association and the Powell-Cotton Museum of Natural History, an honorary associate of the National Secular Society and a former Vice-President of the Zoological Society of London.
He lives in South-East London with his wife and, occasionally, their two children, both now in their twenties.
