Rebirthing the Club of Supper Club

Well, I note our first posting was in November 2008, making COSC over 18 months old. As we discussed at the most recent meeting, it is perhaps time for us to renew our charter and examine our goals and 'achievements' (I'd say they mainly consist of the consumption of a small silo of Schöfferhoffer and an equally impressive volume of highly drinkable shiraz). As part of this, we tentatively agreed on the following:

• To use this blog as our central communication channel
• To define our topics two weeks in advance and post them here
• For the topic-chooser to at least summarily 'minutise' our discussion on this blog after the meeting
• To perhaps devote more time and effort to studying our topics in advance, perhaps even going so far as to have set reading for the night.
  

Accordingly I am briefly summarising Wednesday night's discussion, which focussed on the question: what is worth living for? I introduced the topic by noting that this question was partly brought on by my own reflections on mortality, which inevitably raise questions about what the hell we're doing here. Surely there is a big difference in the way a person answers that depending on whether or not they believe in fundamental meaningless and disorder, or in some greater 'spiritual' context for life ('spiritual' being used here only in the broadest possible sense - simply the idea that that something of the person persists beyond death in some realm or other). On this fundamental question we are divided equally (in the absence of Stephen), with Pierz and Martin in the 'spiritual' camp, Greg and Paul in the 'meaningless' camp (let anyone who wishes to. dispute or refine this gross categorisation please do so in a follow-up post). I will attempt to summarise the debate in short-hand (naturally doing injustice to someone if not everyone):

Paul, defending the validity of life in a meaningless universe, argued that he can celebrate the miraculous unlikelihood of existing at all and can share joy and compassion with others receiving the same lucky break. In the event of an unlucky break, such as that of a leg on a birthday, he can respond philosophically.

Greg asserted that we have to enjoy the journey. That is more important than the goal.

Martin challenged whether enjoyment cuts the mustard as a raison d'etre given the philosophical counter example of someone living in extreme discomfort for the sake of a moral imperative (Nelson Mandela). Debate followed about whether this was some other kind of 'enjoyment' (e.g. of being a 'good' person or maintaining pride or some such), but there was some kind of agreement (at least no vocalised dissent) that a life may be lived for reasons having nothing to do with the satisfaction or otherwise of the self. If we believe in morality, then enjoyment cannot be the only reason for living. For this point Martin scored a beer from the utterly impartial judge, me.

Pierz's main point was ... fuck knows. I think I said that the reason is to engage as deeply with the questions as possible. By which I could also have said that it is to seek truth, beauty, love, knowledge and understanding, however partial. I could have said that the reason for living is the getting of wisdom. Perhaps we are all doing some kind of spiritual work, going out into the universe to gather wisdom as bees go out into the fields to gather nectar, returning in the end to some greater hive where our little individual drops of wisdom will be joined into some kind of celestial honey that will be fed to a giant egg-laying grub. And I mean a really big fucker that shits galaxies.

Whoa. I just went beyond minuting.

Did I get the gist though? Oh yes, and Greg finished by saying it didn't have to be enjoyable, but it did have to be interesting. Which is why he chose a career in database administration.