Welcome to the Humanist Society of Victoria Incorporated (HSV).

It works to build a more civilized society, fostering ethics based on human values.

It considers that reason, free inquiry and a scientific approach enable us to understand the universe and our place in it.

It defends freedom and democracy and provides a positive alternative to religious and dogmatic creeds.

It supports separation of church and state, and secular education.

About the HSVHappy20Humanist


About the Humanist Society of Victoria

Introduction

The Humanist Society of Victoria (HSV) Inc. is a non-profit body that seeks to represent the aspirations and interests of humanists in Victoria, Australia. It is run by volunteers, and in 1990 was incorporated under state law as Association A0020272M.

Aims

Aims of the Humanist Society of Victoria:

  • To help develop a civil society in which each person may reach his or her potential.
  • To advocate ethical decision-making and responsibility for one’s actions, based on respect for individual autonomy, peaceful coexistence between peoples of differing ways of life, and maintenance of a sustainable environment.
  • To support human rights, civil liberties, secular education and a scientific approach to human problems.

Activities

Locally

HSV conducts regular public lectures, featuring guest speakers, aiming to stimulate active, rational debate on a wide range of current social and ethical issues. Speakers have included such personalities as Andrew Wilkie (formerly Office of National Assessments) on the decline of democracy, Dr Max Wallace (Continuing Education, Australian National University) on separating church and state, Dr Rob Sparrow (Human Bioethics, Monash University) on biotechnology and humanism, and Professor Brian Ellis (formerly Philosophy, La Trobe University) on social humanism.
HSV holds regular discussion meetings of members, advertised in the monthly newsletter. Typical subjects of discussion are submissions to be made by the Society to public bodies, presenting the Humanist view of important social questions (see Menus for past submissions).
HSV recognizes a need to counter religious influences in schools, and a curriculum of humanist ethics is being compiled.

 

The Humanist Society of Victoria meets (in Melbourne normally)
  • to hear speakers on Humanist approaches to life and be informed on topics of current interest and importance
  • to explore ideas with people of like mind and so develop Humanist policies
  • to prepare submissions and lobby on matters of wide community concern
  • to organise projects that further Humanist ideals and assist with the welfare of other community members
  • to issue a monthly newsletter (The Victorian Humanist)
Other activities include
  • social gatherings
  • dinners
  • maintaining a Humanist reference library
  • providing counseling services

Committee of management, 2011

President: Stephen Stuart, ph. (03) 9857 8318, SNStuart@msn.com

Vice-president : John Russell, ph. (03) 9846 3989

Secretary: Jean Brown, ph. (03) 9509 8335

Treasurer: Dr Tom Mole, ph. (03) 9853 9141

Ordinary members: Mary Bergin, Harry Gardner, Howard Hodgens, Marie Hodgens, Rosslyn Ives, Leon Midalia

E-mail: victorianhumanist@gmail.com

Nationally

Individual Humanists act as celebrants for secular weddings and officiate for funerals, naming ceremonies and other rites of passage if requested.

The Humanist Societies in each Australian State are affiliated into a national body, the Council of Australian Humanist Societies (CAHS), which

  • meets at an annual Convention
  • co-ordinates Humanist activities nationally
  • publishes the Australian Humanist.
  • maintains contact with other national bodies with similar interests

Globally

The Council of Australian Humanist Societies is a member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), which is a non-governmental organisation accredited to the United Nations. It maintains links with overseas Humanist organisations.

 


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  1. Join the Humanists

One Response to “About Humanism & the HSV”

  1. [Aussies Don't Know What They've Got]
    A Perfect Marriage of Freedom & Justice: a HOW-TO
    Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL the World, & even put an end to all war forever.

    Because it gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combinations of programs, “RB” is the only thing that’s truly both most just & most free. By this shining example & because it always elects the candidate most exactly in the middle of all voting, RB is top-dead-center counter extremist, & thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments combined & thus will even disallow the tendency of (virtually two-party) parliamentary systems to give the top to the biggest gang on the block, sometimes with violently extremist results.

    RB is the sole unchangeable plank & bylaw of a Ranked Ballot Party, the only practicable third party.) We imagine running on the single issue of RB, promising a citizens’ advisory board based on Organized Communications, “OC”, small randomly assigned discussion groups electing reps to higher & higher randomly assigned levels, by means of RB, ‘til one small group, most exactly in the middle of all voting, remains at the top, to guide us in the rest. This group, by its merest invitation to speak, will inevitably name the perfect compromise & next winner That’s the instant part. You do the same, from the most local on up.
    Virtually no democracy has ever been attacked by another. In a world of only democracies, there would no longer be need of the counter-productive wastefulness of armies, war or preparation for war. RB will bring us that & all else: a real solution to terror, a perfect marriage of Freedom & Justice, Tradition & Modernity, Palestinian & Jew, Free Market & Communalism, all the fairness, payback & make-up one could wish for (clean back to the Cro-Magnons) ecologically sustainable politics, what’s best for all workers, instant global women’s liberation, world-wide luxury, a rationalization of the drug war, human unity, the Freedom of Justice & the Justice of Freedom, perhaps the only possible solution to the world’s only real problem, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (once they both have adopted RB), even integrity. RB is to the horse & buggy two-party system as shopping in the Mall of America is to shopping in Soviet Russia. The majority of the problems we face are due to the heavy-footedness of the two party system. RB lessens the power of the extremes, whether authoritarian, economic or sectarian, except through what they can gain by persuasion, which is only what’s just. While it would be equally useful for all else, RB’s real power is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of Iraq. Unless its Parliament comes to select the Prime Minister by means of RB, it may not hold & the country, region & world will be in danger of going to war over some ancient grudge, oil well, multi-ethnic city, or sabotaged pipeline. While the new constitution does call for the selection of the President by a 2/3 vote in the first round (even if only by the parliament & not the people) (who may then decide who will form the new government) & then by a run-off between the top two vote getters in the second round, if that fails to move all three tribes to nominate centrists, then the resulting handful of old men in a back room will fall far short of RB’s ultimate retail politics. RB would be equally useful for all electoral systems parliamentary or presidential (the parliaments choosing their Prime Ministers by RB from among their members, lest they produce another Hitler or other extreme) coops, collective leaderships, tribal groupings, religious confessions, political parties, associations or, even cabals. Whoever gets there first wins. For leaders to best represent their country, or district, whether chosen at large or by a representative body, they must be the perfect compromise, most exactly in the middle, as is given by RB. Yet because it gives minorities a real say in which member of the plurality/majority gets chosen, RB is the only thing that will lead Iraqis, or anyone else, to support any plan more than inadequate confederation. It will result in “phantasmagoric subtlefaction”, real-time alternatives to all proposals, from wherever: market, coop or social, or tribal, theological or universal, answering infinitely more questions at a time than the two party system’s “who is least bad”. Both more Liberty & Justice can be found in RB than in any ideology. With brakes & reverse comes no more need to suppress popular movements around the world. RB will give us subtlety, responsivity, light-footedness, long-sightedness, objectivity, economy, unity, accountability, integrity & victory over extremism. Palestinians & Jews will give up fighting over a sliver of desert & become members of global cooperatives, all the various forms of hegemonism, whether up front, subterranean or unconscious, will be given up, in exchange for leading the world to the light, & America will finally realize the need for an adequate, howsoever minimal, safety net as the price & foundation of a free market.
    Help put this idea, in time, to as many as possible, before “Clockwork Orange” (overpopulation), “1984” (high-tech dictatorship), cosmic collision, tectonic, economic or environmental collapse, or literalist or criminal contretemps. The cost of a full page US national ad (sufficient to put RB to virtually all the world) would be repaid many times over, once all that money gets put to actual productive use, at pre-9/11 US annual defense spending of $10,000 per family. Ten to the power of ten (ten levels of groups of ten) would be sufficient to organize & unite all mankind.
    RB is very freeing. Because it always chooses the candidate in the middle, all who support it are perfectly top-dead-center, with no more need to fear self expression. Politics will become a family discussion around the kitchen table, with no more jumping back & forth between extremes, with it’s absence of the economists’ requirement of predictability for growth. All that’s needed is to let go of the nut to get your fist back out of the knothole (to free yourself) & to rest in the knowledge that RB will give us perfect Freedom & perfect Justice, at one & the same time, even if not necessarily in the form imagined, as if anyone would then care. Unless all the world’s women have total control over their own bodies, no program or condition will ever amount to a hill of beans, because over-population will just eat it up. No woman ever got pregnant to have an abortion. Good enough for New Zealand, Australia, Kerala India, Iraq, London, Ireland, Cambridge Mass, Burlington & 95% of the townships of Vermont, Pierce County Washington, St Paul & Minneapolis Minnesota, the Utah Republican Party for the selection of statewide candidates, the platforms of both the Green & Libertarian Parties & 50 college student bodies across the US with more coming every year, but not good enough for the rest of us? It must be in somebody’s interest! How can any wish it of others if they do not have it themselves? Having spent every spare moment from the invasion, to the vote on the constitution emailing every Iraqi we could find about RB, we would like to claim some little credit for the reforms they did adopt. The only imaginable definition of Freedom (& Morality) is “Do as you wish, but harm no other”. The maker & sustainer of this world (& cosmos!) could have no need of one bit of it. The fiercer the history of the planet, the sooner it would have been blissed out behind ethnic homogeneity, & thus democracy. Tax consumption, not investment, & spread the productivity around. All powers to their lowest appropriate level. All human evil is due to the out of phase fluctuation of population & food supply, so no-one alive is responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, except for what they do now. Justice is the redress of past violence, Freedom the current absence of violence & Nonviolence the only basis of all Morality. Just go collect signatures to get on the ballot, asking those who sign to collect them for you as well. The more the merrier. (The “additive” form of RB is to count the first choices & if no-one has 50%, to add in the next choices, & so on until someone finally does.) Consider that which is common in the sight of all men. zoe morgan z, realzoe@hotmail.com, preferentiality@gmail.com

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