"The good life is
one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."
Painting and Statue of Lord Bertrand Russell
at the Center's Library, McMaster University,
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
GREATER
NEW YORK CITY CHAPTER
OF THE
BERTRAND RUSSELL SOCIETY
GNYCCBRS
(pronounced gunny-CC-burs)
GNYCCBRS
On 1
August 2002, the Greater New York
City Chapter of the
Bertrand
Russell Society was founded by Warren Allen Smith, Thom
Weidlich, and
Ruili Ye.
The GNYCCBRS became the second such chapter, the first being that of
The
Greater Rochester Russell Set in Rochester, New York. An
international chapter previously was formed in Benares/Varanasi
(India).
Chapters encourage membership in the Bertrand Russell Society, which
was founded in 1974 to foster a better understanding of the life, work,
and writing of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and to promote ideas and
causes he thought important. The society’s motto is Russell’s
statement, “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by
knowledge.” (What I Believe, 1925).
The chapter's first meeting was held 4 September 2002 at The Ethical
Culture Society, 2 West 64th Street, New York, NY 10023. Warren Allen
Smith discussed his Celebrities in
Hell
(Barricade Books, 2002, paperback 288 pages, $14.95). Russell
once
wrote, “Hell is a place where the police are German . . . the
motorists, French . . . the cooks, English.” In a similar vein, Smith’s
thesis is that Hell is a silly theological invention, and his book
lists from A to Z numbers of boldface people in the entertainment and
show business world who have gone on record as agreeing, from Larry
Adler, Luis Bunuel, and George Carlin to Bruce Willis, Frank Zappa, and
Nick Zedd.
MEMBERS
The
chapter has no dues,
no treasurer, and no secretary.
Members as of June 2006 are as follows: Rosalind Carey; David
Goldman; John Lenz; Dennis
Middlebrooks; John Ongley; Maithili Schmidt-Raghavan; Warren Allen
Smith; Eric and Suzanne Walther; Thom Weidlich; and Ruili Ye.
ACTIVISM
- Rosalind Carey, David Goldman, John Ongley, Thom Weidlich, and Warren Allen Smith attended the May 2006 annual BRS Conference, this year hosted by the philosophy department at the University of Iowa.
-
Rosalind Carey, David Goldman, John
Ongley, Warren Allen Smith, Thom Weidlich, and Ruili Ye are elected
board members of the Bertrand Russell Society who have attended other annual
conferences.
- Thom Weidlich, writing for Bloomberg News, was a reporter during the May 2006 Enron trials.
- Dennis Middlebrooks was published in the NY Daily News
(28 May 2006): "After hearing pious blowhards attacking a work of
fiction [ʼDa Vinci Code'] as blasphemous, I am grateful this country
was founded on the heretical principle of separation of church and
state. It is no crime here to cast a negative light on any religion.
There is no Inquisition to punish 'errors.' Those bloviators must
pine for the good ol' days."
- Smith in October 2005 coined the word Philosopedia, which has a website. http://philosopedia.org
All Russellians are invited to be listed.
- Eric Walther spoke to us on 10 July
2005 at Manhattan's Jane Street Tavern about "The B.B.C. Principle."
- At the 2003 conference in Lake Forest College in Illinois, Smith in a
skit entitled "What Lord Russell Didn't Know About Music" performed (as
Ludwig Wittgenstein) along with Rochester's Tim Madigan (as Lord
Russell).
- We were represented on 25 and 26 Oct 2002 at the Sidney Hook
Conference held at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, NYC.
- Smith donated to Harvard's Houghton Library 1951 and 1956
correspondence he received from Lord Russell.
- Informal meetings have been held in 2003 at La Belle Vie (Tim Madigan
visited); in 2004 at a midtown deli (Peter Stone and his father
visited,
as did Taslima Nasrin, who spoke).
- Middlebrooks and Smith have had frequent letters-to-the-editor published in a variety of journals.
- Taslima Nasrin and Ibn Warraq, both nominated by Smith as
honorary members of the BRS, were accepted and the chapter has
encourage them to continue their consummate work as scholars on Muslim
matters. Smith has become Nasrin's editor as well as spokesperson and
has made possible her homepage, which allows the downloading of her
several banned books. In 2004 she received the $100,000 UNESCO
Prize for her promotion of tolerance and non-violence. In 2005 Amnesty
France nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005, but she did not win.
- Smith in 2004 arranged for the formation of a BRS chapter in
Dominica, one headed by the island's leading surgeon and including the
island's leading anthropologist. Smith and Walther sent several
dozen Russell books to their chapter's library.
-Several Russellians visited the McMaster Universitylibrary room
where Lord Russell's desk is
displayed.
