---
title: "Making sense of war: New Humanist autumn 2022 out now"
date: "2022-08-18T09:36:17+01:00"
modified: "2022-08-18T09:36:17+01:00"
url: "https://rationalists.org.uk/2022/08/18/making-sense-of-war-new-humanist-autumn-2022-out-now/"
post_id: 7340
categories: ["Uncategorised"]
---

# Making sense of war: New Humanist autumn 2022 out now

***![Autumn 2022 New Humanist](https://rationalists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/2208-01-Cover.jpg)***

***The autumn 2022 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! [Subscribe here](/subscribe) to the print edition for as little as £27 a year. You can also [buy a single copy](/supportus) for just £7.45. Available in all good newsagents.***

**Making sense of war**
=======================

**Polishing the crystal ball**

The intelligence community often fails to make accurate predictions. **Amy Zegart**, an expert brought in to improve analysis in the United States, sets out what can be done to overcome our cognitive biases.

> Improving analysis to prevent nuclear catastrophe isn’t just a matter of history. Great power competition is back. Russia and China are trying to rewrite the international order along authoritarian lines.

**The meaning of war**

In this philosophical essay, **Peter Salmon** explores the power of storytelling as a weapon, and asks whether we can ever tell the “truth” about war.

> As videos pour out of Ukraine in real time, analysed by thousands of citizen journalists for their veracity, and for intended and unintended clues regarding locations, troop strength, weaponry and victim counts, we are drenched in images in a way that even Nazi propagandists could not have imagined, could not have dreamed.

**God and the homeland**

**Amanda Coakley** travels to Hungary to meet the supporters of Viktor Orbán. A former atheist, the Prime Minister now has plans to spread his brand of Christian Democracy across central Europe.

> Orbán, I came to understand, had not just undermined Hungary’s democracy by attacking the judiciary, gerrymandering the electoral map and hollowing out the independent media. He had also built a deep cult of personality, grounded in the false idea that Hungary is now the guardian of Europe’s old Christian Democratic tradition.

**Q&amp;A**

J.P. O’Malley speaks with **Francis Fukuyama** about his most recent book “Liberalism and its Discontents”.

> Many progressives have indeed abandoned basic liberal values. One extremely important value of liberal thought is freedom of speech.

***The autumn 2022 issue of New Humanist is on sale now! [Subscribe here](/subscribe) for as little as £10 a year.***

**Also in this issue:**

**![Kurt Vonnegut new documentary](https://rationalists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/image1.jpg "Still from Kurt Vonnegut documentary ")**

- **Emma Park** on the serious side of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
- **Marcus Chown** on how quantum computers could give us superhuman intelligence
- Every era has its own myths and rituals. **Rami Gabriel argues** that ours today come from psychology
- **Samira Ahmed** goes back to the Bronze Age
- Should scientific research ever be banned, asks **Kit Chapman**?
- **Keith Kahn-Harris** proposes a way to take on the stereotyping of Jewish people
- What does TV look like in the post-#MeToo era, asks **Caroline Crampton**?
- **Soraya Chemaly** writes from the US on the “crime” of abortion
- **Jonathan Shipley** watches a new documentary on Kurt Vonnegut
- **Kaya Genç** on Elif Batuman’s radical art of self-portraiture
- PLUS: Columns from **Michael Rosen** and **Laurie Taylor**, book reviews, poems, cryptic crossword and **Chris Maslanka**‘s quiz

*New Humanist is published four times a year by the Rationalist Association, a 136-year-old charity promoting reason and free enquiry. We’re a quarterly magazine of culture, ideas, science and philosophy. To make a deeper commitment to our work, why not [become a member](/subscribe/billing) of the Rationalist Association?*