Welcome to the August 2025 Edition of Humanistically Speaking.​​

​

The humanist ideal has been applied to towns and cities for over 500 years. A 15th-century painting The Ideal City (1480-84, usually attributed to the artist Fra Carnevale) illustrates the concept of humanism in architecture. The Ideal City celebrates the values of a well-ordered society, with architecture standing as a metaphor for good government.

 

In this issue of Humanistically Speaking, eight of our writers approach the theme of town and city centres from a humanist perspective. The development of out-of-town shopping centres, combined with the convenience of online shopping, has led to the virtual collapse of some town centres, including Bournemouth on the south coast of England where I live. Similarly, when George Locke visited her childhood town of Pembroke Dock in Wales, the place looked tired – abandoned by investment and hope. But sparks of hope remain, because residents are refusing to let the heart of the town die. Some cities, such as Phnom Penh in Cambodia, do not even have a ‘centre’, whereas the new town of Poundbury has managed to create a new kind of centre: ‘a tiny slice of safe, functioning urbanity nestled in rural Dorset’ according to Lucy Erskine, who founded her marketing business there.

 

Stephen Marshall, an early pioneer in neural networks, recently asked ChatGPT to imagine a future, only a few decades hence, in which humans have ceded world government to a superintelligent AI. The prospect is exciting or chilling, depending on your perspective. David Falls, based near Phoenix, Arizona, has written an insightful piece about how algorithms are now quietly shaping ‘the human soul’. The online world can offer advice, emotional support and community, and it can play a powerful role in shaping identity, meaning and morality. But there’s no guarantee that any of this will lead to an improvement in human nature. Social media has, if anything, made us more tribal, vicious and extreme. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson observes that ‘groups divided by differing beliefs on divisive issues – such as Palestine, immigration, equal rights for men, gender ideology, or systemic racism – are increasingly polarized with the result that they are left shouting at each other rather than talking to each other.’ To maintain progress as a civilization we need to understand other points of view and we need to be willing to modify our own points of view dependent on the evidence.

 

Vir Narain and Owen Morton have, in different ways, explored the idea that humanist morality is intrinsically rewarding. The humanistic value system sees life not as a solitary pursuit, but as ‘links in the chain’ – a continuum of influence and legacy – and that what we leave behind forms a kind of ‘moral footprint’. These are powerful and inspiring metaphors. 

 

We hope you will share our articles on social media. You’re free to republish them in your own humanist newsletters and elsewhere, as long as you credit the author and provide a link to Humanistically Speaking. For more details, refer to our Creative Commons licence by following the links at the bottom of every page.

 

in order to ensure our future sustainability as a volunteer-run publication, Humanistically Speaking is probably about to go quarterly. If that’s confirmed, we’ll be back in November with our Autumn issue. If you’d like to contribute an article or news report, do get in touch. And thank you for all you do to make humanism a recognized framework of meaning and morality in our suffering yet beautiful world. 

​

David Warden

Editor