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What we’re about
Where actual inquiring minds meet.
This Austin Meetup was formed so people with a similar, secular understanding of the world could get together and build friendships, find support, exchange ideas and simply have fun! There are several events listed every month - from educational programs to social activities. You will find a Lecture Series, Discussion Group, Book Group, dining out, Community Volunteer Programs - most are free and new folks are always welcome. Most members do not attend all of the events all of the time (including group organizers) - but they are all for folks like us to get together as much as we can. The idea is to meet new people and to catch up with ones we have known a while. Most events are sponsored by the Center for Inquiry Austin; however some events that might interest CFI Austin members also get posted. Come be a part of the Austin secular community!
We are now a semi-autonomous chapter of the Center For Inquiry Transnational.
During the 2020-21 pandemic most of our activities were put on hold. As we re-emerge we will need a core of volunteers to help us move forward. If you wish to get involved, please message Steve Bratteng or Rachel Harger.
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- Non-fiction book: "Why War?" by Richard OveryCentral Market Cafe, Austin, TX
# Why War? by Richard Overy
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Why has war been such a consistent presence throughout the human past? A leading historian explains, drawing on rich examples and keen insight.
Richard Overy is not the first scholar to take up the title question. In 1931, at the request of the League of Nations, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud to collaborate on a short work examining whether there was “a way of delivering mankind from the menace of war.” Published the next year as a pamphlet entitled Why War?, it conveyed Freud’s conclusion that the “death drive” made any deliverance impossible—the psychological impulse to destruction was universal in the animal kingdom. The global wars of the later 1930s and 1940s seemed ample evidence of the dismal conclusion.
A preeminent historian of those wars, Overy brings vast knowledge to the title question and years of experience unraveling the knotted motivations of war. His approach is to separate the major drivers and motivations, and consider the ways each has contributed to organized conflict. They range from the impulses embedded in human biology and psychology, to the incentives to conflict developed through cultural evolution, to competition for resources—conflicts stirred by the passions of belief, the effects of ecological stresses, the drive for power in leaders and nations, and the search for security. The discussions show remarkable range, delving deep into the Neolithic past, through the twentieth-century world wars, and up to the current conflict in Ukraine. The examples are absorbing, from the Roman Empire’s voracious appetite for resources to the impulse to power evident in Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Hitler. The conclusion is not hopeful, but Overy’s book is a gift to readers: a compact, judicious, engrossing examination of a fundamental question.