Philosopher / Writer
She became interested in the “big questions” involving “what makes us human?” A naturally positive and compassionate person, she has written books and advocated for a tolerant world where rational thinking and kindness prevail.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
SB was born in Bournemouth, England to ‘bookish’ parents who ran a small hotel.
CHILDHOOD
Around age 6, SB and her parents spent two years wandering through India in a Volkswagen bus before settling in Sydney, Australia, where her father ran a university bookstore and her mother worked as a librarian. Later, they moved back to Europe, taking off regularly for family backpacking trips through Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Thus, SB’s eyes and mind were opened early in her life to a big world of many different people and their ways of living.
EDUCATION – OK TO CHANGE YOUR FOCUS
At the University of Essex, in Britain, SB started studying literature, but soon her interest drifted to ‘Philosophy’: the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence. It has also been described as an academic discipline for the study of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.
SB enrolled in the Ph.D. program for philosophy and planned on writing her doctoral dissertation about a man whose philosophic views favored Nazism but soon the prospect of investing so much time on such a racist individual was less interesting. Said SB, “The wind really went out of my sails on that one.”
EARLY ADULT JOBS ARE NEVER A BINDING CAREER COMMITMENT
After declining to pursue writing a biography of a racist, SB moved back to London to become a writer, initially supporting herself financially by working a series of “really awful” (SB’S description) day jobs, including one in a tea-bag factory.
INTEREST IN BIG QUESTIONS LEADS TO A CAREER
After earning a postgraduate degree in artificial intelligence, SB got a job as a librarian and then as a curator and cataloger of early modern books at a London-based charitable foundation dedicated to the relationship between health, culture, and medicine.
SB’s work as a cataloguer of well-respected essays written centuries earlier exposed her to ideas about ‘humanism’ and the development of human thoughts which seemed to her to still be relevant in the modern world. To help herself make sense of whether earlier thoughts about the development of human thinking were applicable to today, SB began to write stories in the form of biographies of early humanistic philosophers, to illustrate – first for herself and hopefully eventually to a larger readership – how centuries-old essays about how humans think were still important.
AUTHOR’S CHALLENGE – FINDING A PUBLISHER FOR A SMALL READERSHIP
Book publishing is a business like all other businesses – the goal is to earn income greater than expenses, which yields profitability. Publishers know it’s easier to sell books about romance or sports or politics or crime, than about philosophy.
So, SB wisely chose to present her thoughts about philosophy within stories about famous thinkers / philosophers.
If the new author can achieve a favorable book review from a respected critic, the publisher and the new author will have passed their first hurdle toward success. The goal then becomes to interest a broader readership in the book. Modern technology’s online reviews can be very helpful in spreading favorable book reviews.
‘HUMANISM’ DEFINED
Editor’s note – “Humanism” is an outlook or ‘philosophical stance’ that emphasizes the individual and his or her social potential, rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanistic beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems. Humanism may also be defined as a system of education.
During “The Age of Enlightenment” (17th and 18th centuries in Europe), humanistic values were re-enforced by advances in science and technology, giving confidence to humans in their exploration of the world.
Humanism generally denotes a focus on human well-being and advocates for human freedom, autonomy, and progress. It views humanity as responsible for the promotion and development of individuals, espouses the equal and inherent dignity of all human beings, and emphasizes a concern for humans in relation to the world.
Humanist movements are typically non-religious and aligned with secularism, which focuses on the state as separate from religious institutions.
Tolerant humanism doesn’t criticize the role of religion in people’s lives; instead, tolerant humanism respects individual’s freedom of thought, which includes religious beliefs, but chooses to focus on what is known and knowable about human beliefs and practices to create a better world for all human beings.
PONDERING BIG QUESTIONS LED TO WRITING ABOUT THEM
After writing a book dealing with early humanistic philosophers, SB wanted to next focus more directly on the basic issue within humanism: What does it mean to be human? It’s an ancient question that’s hard to answer, but easy to ask.
SB’s second book, “How to Live” was inspired by another random moment of serendipity: several decades earlier, SB had been in Hungary, looking for something to read during a train ride, when she picked up a copy of Montaigne’s essays. She was enthralled by that author, who “trashes all the humanistic pieties on the subject of reading,” defending, for example, the right to unapologetically toss a dull book aside. Said SB, “What he (Montaigne) looks for in a book is to make some kind of contact with the person who wrote it, that sense of the personality of the author. I feel that too.”
“How to Live” was widely read and praised for SB’s interesting perspective on the 16th century, French essayist Michel de Montaigne, in which she reviewed his focus on humanity – not religion – and included her own, sometimes amusing, self-help wit.
With the success of her first two books, SB now had the confidence to proceed with writing more stories involving early humanistic thinkers’ relevance to modern times.
SB’s next book, “At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails” involved a group portrait of famous thinkers who wrestled with the intertwined philosophical and political crises of their day.
SB’s 2023 book, “Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry and Hope” is a history – and defense – of ‘The Grand Humanist Project’, from the first stirrings of the Italian Renaissance to today’s debates about technology, artificial intelligence, and trans-humanism.
“Humanly Possible” aims to bring some clarity to the issues of ‘humanism’, while connecting two kinds of humanism that are often seen as separate: (1) the tradition of learning and inquiry that in the West (Europe and America) goes back to the Italian Renaissance, and (2) the lineage of religious freethinkers who have tried to create a God-free system of ethics.
SB says she had long been interested in the big question: “What is the relationship between these two kinds of humanism?” Her goals are to understand – and to transmit her understanding – of how the two viewpoints are – and can be – related to promoting ‘the best practices’ among all humans.
CHALLENGE – HUMANISM PERCEIVED AS ELITIST
Each year, a steady stream of books and podcasts explains how to be human at work, in relationships, in a changing (or technical or warming, or whatever) world. Meanwhile, in some intellectual quarters, “humanism” is seen as a mask for elitism, financially well-off complacency or worse – when it isn’t dismissed entirely as a useless, ‘squishy’ concept.
SB’s aim within her writings is to create a general appreciation for focusing on how humans can interact peacefully and respectfully with each other regardless of their religious and political affiliations and their economic status.
CAREER SATISFACTION
Always trying to avoid friction between secular and religious viewpoints, SB has said: “Religion is itself a very distinctively human activity. If you’re trying to put human culture, human activity, at the center of your thinking, there’s something very odd about turning your back completely on religion.”
For SB, the essence of humanism lies not in grand ideas but within the idiosyncrasies of individual experiences – and the responsibility of each human to respect the freedoms of thought for each other.
___________________________________________________________________________
This career story is based on several sources: an article written by Jennifer Schuessler, published within The New York Times on 4/3/23 plus online research, including Wikipedia and the Editor’s experience with authors who have either self-published or partnered with a publisher.
