Stephen's topic

Sorry to still be emailing this to you - at this late stage and all - but I failed in my weekend's campaign to post my topic to the blog. The blogger blog is a shitty thing that has been designed by sadists, but hopefully my topic is not - so Martin will post it up there for now. Here it is - would be great if people were able to muse overnight and bring some thoughts to the session: Almost daily now there is another headline about a flood or other extreme weather event in a different part of the world. If these extreme weather events continue to increase, we may eventually reach a point where acceptance that we are sliding into an environmental disaster reaches critical mass. By critical mass I mean the point at which the majority of people no longer view radical change in our daily behaviour as an annoying idea imposed on them by others, but rather as a personal imperative driven by their own sense of necessity. Or, to put it more basically, where fear overtakes denial as the stronger instinct. At this point, one would presume that the level of global human energy that comes online to actualise change should bloom to thousands of times its current level. While, from our current decrepit vantage point, that might seem like a victory in itself, the subsequent challenge, of "what to do now?" will be just as important to our salvation, and no doubt be subject to all the same squabbling, power-plays and screw-ups that plague the majority of mass decision making. Up to now, it seems amazing how little public energy the growing challenge to come up with a 'new way' appears to occupy. Where are the models, the proposals, the scenarios? Isn't solution or scenario modeling the standard approach to managing an imminent serioius threat? Instead, all humanity seems to have come up with is a hotchpotch of good samaritan ideas, such as having four minute showers, and tokenistic, commercial and political piss-fartings such as carbon trading. If the developed world is living in a manner that cannot be supported by the planet then surely that manner itself has to change. And yet, humans, like all beasts, are hard wired to acquire and horde both material and power - and certainly not to relinquish it. The challenge therefore, is this: What does a world look like that is both sustainable and palatable? As the first of our new, more applied, COSC series, I can think of few more worthwhile challenges than to make an initial attempt to devise a practicable, high-level, new model for a sustainable modern society, suitable as a target for transition over the next few decades. To provide a little structure for the discussion, I propose the following primary criteria for the solution - we can discuss and adjust these if necessary at the beginning of the session. The solution should: 1. Discuss change across the various primary struts of society - political, legal, commercial, technological, social, cultural, communal etc.. 2. Address the major known environmental impact areas: food and nutrition / transport / manufacturing and consumerism / waste / 3. Be fully cognizant of human nature i.e. as palatable as possible to existing generations and culture. 4. Be practicable within the confines of current technologies or those reasonably foreseeable in the coming decades. Now, I am fully aware that this is not a likely brief for a 90 minute discussion but I think that although we can't hope to weave anything like a complete fabric for a solution in one session, it would nevertheless be very worthwhile if we can simply make a general start by tossing around some thoughts and creating a few good threads.

3 Feb 2009: Paul's Topic

I have struggled long over this post. I have been puzzling, maybe not daily, but at least ever few days, how I could lead the next conversation.

I have been thinking about my dreams. I have been puzzling if there is any hidden meaning in them. Wondering if maybe some strange thing that has been dredged up from my subconscious has some meaning. Is it telling me the future? Is it rehashing something from the past? Is it something that I'm current worried about? And I have been trying to put it in the context of our meetings... but nothing. I just haven't been able to grasp at a meaning.

Now obviously my short span of concentration hasn't been enough to totally dissuade me from imaging that there is something there, but as yet, it just hasn't bitten me.

So, given my predicament, I have chosen a more basic subject for focus of our next discussion, something more primeval, something that can be grasped and held onto. Fear.

In my imagination, this is coming from a similar place to dreams. It is something which drives us, which shapes our world. What we are willing to put ourselves up against. What we are unwilling to embark on. It must, must, come from that imaginative part of our brain. The part that remembers as a child hiding behind the couch when something unimaginable(/imaginable) was happening on the television. The lying in bed with the dread that something/someone was hiding in the wardrobe ready to pounce when the eyelids shut. The scary future, the worry that the familiar world will skip a track and suddenly be playing a different tune.

So, I don't give have a strong topic to lead, rather just a starting point for a discussion. Hopefully we can tie in to some of the earlier topics, and maybe just add a little more background to them to further discussions.

11 Mar 2009: Greg's Topic

For this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss the topic of the flow of time.

What really sparked my interest is I heard a scientist discussing this issue and she said that none of the physical laws are time directional, in other words they don't support an 'arrow of time' as most humans perceive it. Following from this two distinct possibilities were presented:

1. There is a absolute flow of time from past to present to future. In this model, the future hasn't happened yet (whatever that means) and time is independent of human (or other) consciousness. The future could be considered non-linear and chaotic, and therefore impossible to predict except in the most limited domains. This is the model to which almost all humans prescribe, and even those that don’t usually operate day-to-day as if they do.

2. Flow of time is only human construct, and actually all 'moments' or 'states' or whatever of the universe exist simultaneously. In this case , the flow of time is purely a human construct.

An additional question regards single or multiple/infinite timelines or event sequences. Either model could be consistent with the universe splitting at any or all points. Certainly, option 2 where all states exist simultaneously in a single event sequence seems to be incredibly fatalistic.

One interesting question regards entropy, where systems tend to move from high to low potential energy and from ordered to a disordered states. Is this a genuine arrow of time or another human construct?

5 Aug 2009: Paul's Topic

I'm trying to think of a suitable topic, but not particularly successfully.

To distract you all, I suggest you do the survey on America's Apocalypse. (if you can't be bothered reading the article the link is here - which on my second run through I was an "humanitarian internationalist", which was a lot better that what I was labeled the first time...)

OK, now nice that you've forgotten that I was supposed to be choosing a topic...

So, I'm thinking that tomorrow we'll talk something along the line of "Social Responsibility".

- Should you donate to charities? (or are the ones that demand only the ones that are good at advertising?)
- Should you give some money to beggars? (or is that just proving them with a local maximum from which they can't jump out of?)
- Should you volunteer for the local sports club/council/group? (or should that be just a role of local council?)
- Does what work requires of people now leave them in a state which is unable to have the energy to contribute to society building? (and that stuff is better left to the professionals anyway?)

Anyway, something along those lines!

26 May 2010: Paul'sTopic (although he couldn't make it)

OK, we all have a week to form some opinions on this topic... (which is less ethereal than possibly some...)

A number of European countries/lawmakers (Belgium, France, Switzerland, Germany, etc.) have proposed/legislated that the burqa should be banned from public display. Is this an attack on religious belief, a liberation of oppressed women, a racist backlash again recent years Muslim terrorism or just politicians trying to draw peoples attention away from disappointing economic activity over the last couple of years?

So the conversation can head in a number of directions from there, but I think a couple of themes come though:

- Should religion have freedom to express itself in whatever it's forms?

- Should members of society be forced to have responsibilities as well as rights? What limits either way?

- Is this a particularly European issue because of lack of multiculturalism? (well beside other Europeans - but is Australia any different?)

Anyway, we'll start with that, and maybe see where it leads.

28 Apr 2010: Piers' Topic

Last time I chose a topic it was death. Now life's other painful inevitability - no, not taxes - love. According to all the spiritual traditions I know, Love has a central, if not the central place. But what kind of love? Surely not the intense, passing fever of romantic passion, even less it's pale cousin, infatuation. It seems an irony that something as notoriously fickle, treacherous and ephemeral as romantic love should share the same word as that which in the great religious traditions is supposed to be eternal, even synonymous with God. The Greeks did not confound such utterly disparate phenomena. They had several words for love: Eros, for passionate love, of which sexual love is one variety; Philia, for friendship and loyalty; Storge, for natural affection, especially within the family; and finally Agape, for deeper or true love, including selfless love, the spiritual love which we are supposed to strive for or live by in most (all?) religions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love.

But all these forms of love are related (I would argue), and one could make an argument that even the most shallow infatuation is an inferior or immature form of this one Love, that in infatuation we love the image of something we see through the window of the temporary object of our desire. For a moment we see Beauty, Passion and Transcendence incarnate in the form of some chick. Romantic love seems to be the way divine love reaches those of us who aren't saints. That is how it generally breaks through and wounds us.

Because love is the only way we get wounded. I challenge anyone to find a counter-example. Only physical pain seems to defy the rule that all pain comes from love, or in fact the failure and the loss of love. (Of course the formula requires a broad definition of love, including the self-love of egotism). Love hurts us either because we lose the object of love, or the object of love does not love us back, or loves us in some imperfect way. Initially when I was writing this I was thinking of love as an outgoing thing, the act of loving. But love is intrinsically two-way, at least the love that seems to matter most. We need the object of our love to love us back, sometimes to love us back in a very exact way. That is why we seek and seek for a love we never quite seem to find: because we love the idea of being loved in a certain very precise way, and any imperfection in that being-loved-ness is intolerable to us. S/he is not The One (how religious!).

Some psychologists would argue that is all about parental love - the quirks of our adult tastes and choices are expressions of the way we were loved or the way we failed to be loved by our parents, mainly of course our mother. But where does this passion for maternal love come from? How/why do these infantile wounds carry such intense stings? Like we come into the world naked and helpless and ready to have these invisible knives plunged into us, wounds from which we will continue to bleed our whole lives - at least if you buy that line of psychological theory. On a philosphophical/speculative note, if the infant's love and need for love is some reflection of divine Love, then does God also fail us in the same way mother inevitably does? Is Love itself flawed? (Again presupposing one is prepared to take a Platonic view of love - I mean the eternal forms idea, not platonic with a small 'p').

OK, this has gotten deep. I'll stop there. One other observation that is interesting: there seems something faintly embarrassing about the subject! Why is that? I have an idea, but am interested to hear what others think.

21 Jul 2010: Piers' Topic

Er... yeah. The topic. Is. Umm. The topic is... ! The topic is... OK the topic is: What is worth living for? No, I'm not suicidal. But I am curious as to what people feel about this, especially given our mix of metaphysical positions. What is worth living for if we accept that it's all fundamentally meaningless and random? Pleasure? Or is it in fact that nothing is worth living for as such, it's merely that as animals we are compelled to continue now that we're on the conveyor belt? So we contrive distractions to fill the time before we die, as I think Paul put it (words to that effect). Or if we believe in some greater spiritual or metaphysical context, then how do we honour that, and what makes our lives worth living in the context of that greater reality?

Right, you've got four and a half hours to solve that one. Free beer for the best answer (I'm included among the contestants and I'm the judge. No correspondence will be entered into and the judge's decision is final).

23 Mar 2010: Stephen's topic

OK – tomorrow it is then.

The topic for this month, continues to focus on the human subject and our fundamental frame of reference – that from which our mind, culture and reality arise – today we will examine the subjectivity/objectivity duality.

Why is it that when three people look at the same issue, we so often have such different responses?

What are the factors behind the differences? vantage point, history, habit, education, intelligence, discipline, personal agenda etc...

How does one work out whether they are being objective – what are the signs and techniques?

If we were to order our objectivity, what would be some of the things that we know most surely?

Is there an active struggle b/w the imagined world and the material world – which one is winning?

What do we value most between the countable, material imperfect world and the uncountable, unprovable but more idealised world - which is closer to god and which to the animals?

What are the means by which a man manages the material and imagined worlds? Dreams, expectations, biases, vs.realities of matter and realities of the crowd.

Sanity and Insanity – is sanity anything more than a label for the subjective consensus of the many and classic insanity the result of venturing too far out of the grid and losing grip in the free space?

And what of the dream conundrum – each day we pass from one reality into another, being neither conscious nor in control of the transformation – it reminds even the most materialistic of us that our senses are not built on solid rock.

That should keep us going for 90 minutes I’d reckon.

24 Feb 2010: Greg's topic

I think tonight’s the go as we can’t seem to organise? Let me know if that’s not the case.

Anyway I should introduce the topic. And that is money, or more specifically the current ‘fiat’ system.

I’ve been reading quite a lot about the current monetary system recently and have become more and more convinced that it is eventually doomed – one way or another and

· Can the current monetary system survive?

· If not, what are features that have caused it to fail?

· What alternatives are out there and how would they work? Could a close variant of the current system work with a few important changes, or

· Probably the scariest question is: if the monetary system has to be fundamentally changed, is it possible to do so in a controlled and (relatively) painless way? Even if it’s possible in theory, is it in possible in reality, taking political and social reality into account? In other words, are we facing a situation where the social organisation on which we rely will be thrown into chaos? Or is that over dramatising the situation?

· Should we spend all our money today, because saving it for the future is pointless? And where is that bottle of Grange I ordered?

I realise none of us are economists, so there is at least a chance we can have something sensible on the topic…

See you tonight so we can spend some.

12 Dec 2009: Piers' Topic

Tonight's topic is death. (But I never ate the salmon mousse!!)
I used to say - and genuinely believe - that I wasn't afraid of death. I wasn't afraid of it like I'm not afraid of the mafia, neutron bombs, cannibals and dragons. Of course you're not afraid of something that can't possibly affect you personally. Most of us go through a good proportion of our (younger) lives thinking of death in the abstract. It's only as age starts to bite that it takes on any kind of reality. Some writer (who was it?) said, "in the end everyone loses everything". That is death. You can lose everything slowly, by getting very old, in which case death is a letting go of the very last thing you have, your last tenuous hooks on life, or you can lose it all in one go, by hitting a tree at speed while micro-napping or some such. So death - loss - is really creeping into us the whole time. It's not really such a savage, impermeable boundary. We live with death, with our own death, every day. How do we accommodate it? What is our relationship with it? Those are just some preliminary reflections. You will have your own...

Paul, sorry you can't make it tonight. You can sit at home with your leg up and drink wine and think about death on your own... :)

28 Oct 2009: Stephen's topic Ethics of Community, Tribe and Family

Ethics of Community, Tribe and Family.

Society and the bonds between people is based on an interchange of some value between them.

Without some exchange we are merely incidental cohabitants of a mutual space – no obligation no expectation.

As participants in a relationship we are already inside an interchange dynamic.

Even to say ‘I have no expectations and expect you to have none of me’ is a positive position within the domain.

If one agrees with all this, to be social implies that we each, generally (as a personality default) and more specifically (within each of our relationships) bring an approach or set of ethics to bear on our actions and decisions, where other are involved.

So the question space is this:

What are the ethics that run your relationships?

Do we have a responsibility toward those around us to play according to some shared value or is it rather about each looking to the gain (personal or otherwise) of each individual circumstance?

If there is such a thing as responsibility and it is mutual, does expectation also have a place?

And the grand question – what is an ethical approach that leads to a great life – for you and for your tribe and family.

N.B.

The focus of this topic is ‘tribe and family’ - read friends and family.

Community is included only as a contextualiser for the other two as the conversation becomes too wide if we are also trying to analyse our global ethical position.

30 Sep 2009: Greg's topic

I’ve been reading about the teachings of the spiritual leader G. I. Gurdijeff.

One of Gurdijeff’s fundamental ideas is that of man as a machine, and a corresponding absence of unity in man. In this idea man doesn’t (and cannot) ‘do’ anything, rather things just happen based on external influences (machine like), without a will. Because of this, the ‘I’ changes rapidly depending on current external influences, leading to inconsistencies or ideas, broken promises, projects started but never completed, etc. The belief of most that there is a single (fairly) consistent ‘I’ is a myth.

However Gurdijeff also states that it’s possible, with sufficient and desire and sacrifice, to free oneself from this state – and a permanent and unchanging ‘I’ can be achieved with

So, the topic is to discuss the questions: Does man have an (even partially) consistent ‘I’? Do people change as rapidly as Gurdijeff supposes? Is it possible to achieve a permanent and unchanging ‘I’ if one doesn’t exist (or bring it to the surface if it is suppressed)?

5 Jun 2009: Stephens topic for full moon JD 2454990.25903.

How are you defined?

Your decisions both inform and are informed by who you are - but how do you make decisions?

Each time you are faced with an important decision you pass it through your own persona. This is inescapable.

Logic

Romance or

Recklessness

Caution

Naivete

Cynicism

Conformity

Rebellion

Integrity

Perversity

Altruism

Selfishness

Method

Madness

Reinvention

Continuity

Experimentation

Consolidation

All negotiable modes of a persona - each growing and recoiling , one against the other, organically as we evolve through our lifetimes.

But who are we and from where do we make decisions and take positions

Are we flexibly in control of our decisions or ruled by patterns and tendencies.

So, the question of the evening:

What is the relationship between what you are and the decisions you make?