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.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
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!
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 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.
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).
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.
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