Hello,
Meaning and Action, two themes to reflect on this week.
The results of a Pew study came out this week discussing what particular things Americans ascribe as adding meaning to their lives. In the aggregate, "family" and "career" were found to provide 69 and 34 percent of Americans meaning respectively--as opposed to "Spirituality and faith" which trailed in fourth at 20% (with "spending time with family" to provide the "most important source of meaning").
Empirically, we care more about those in the here and now than in the hereafter. This can become difficult with distance. Those who are far, or who are different may cross your mind with less frequency, but there is a certain degree of urgency.
Right now, out of the long list of ongoing human rights crises, two in particular come within our particular sphere of awareness as a group (most individuals reading this being secular-advocates and/or Humanists). This involves the mass-detention of large groups of people based upon ethno-religious identity.
The Uighur minority in western China is currently facing incredible persecution as are the Rohingya people in northern Myanmar. This is not on the scale of hundreds, or of thousands, but of millions.
We are drafting two letters two advocate the amelioration of this horrible situation, as well as two additional letters regarding a government-sponsored "heresy-reporting" app in Indonesia, and the Trump Administration's attempts to define gender as biological sex at birth.
Our monthly phone call will resume on the first Thursday of January (3rd) at 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (US). We will discuss these four matters.
We have also added to the quantity of our weekly newsletter.
Please mark your calendar for the first call in January, and look for the first of the four letters in next week's bulletin.
Have a great week,
sincerely,
Jason Frye, CEO
Secular Policy Institute
