The Great Conversation
The Great Conversation: Discussing “the Great Ideas” as We Encounter the Best that Has Been Thought and Written
Feb 26: see description below
This weekly “global dialogue” is designed so that students and adults can either attend regularly each week or drop in from time to time. We want to get you excited about discussing the great ideas that matter in today’s changing world. Here’s a sampling of the kinds of provocative questions we enjoy discussing together:
Who are some of history’s most creative and influential visionaries, thinkers, writers, artists, scientists, leaders and reformers? What are their great achievements and what can we learn from them?
What is the nature of reality and of the world in which we live? What can we know, and how can we know it? What are our sources of inspiration and authority? How do we deal with the “boundary experiences” of mystery, ambiguity, enigma, irony, absurdity, plurality and paradox?
What is a human being? Does life have a transcendent meaning and purpose, or are meaning and purpose existentially constructed? In today’s world what is happening within the institutions of religion, education, arts, entertainment, science, medicine, technology, business, finance, military, government and law? How ought we to live and treat one another? What is the basis for ethics? What is the good life? What is the good society? What is our origin and destiny? Where is history going? What are our ultimate concerns?
Rich Lang serves as the facilitator.
Feb 26: This Friday we return to our discussion of Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization. In particular we will be discussing Rifkin's optimistic secular liberal assumption that human beings are naturally and essentially empathic creatures, and that it is largely the fault of "Calvin and Hobbes" (Religious Puritanism and Secular Pessimism) that so many people believe human beings are "sinful" and "selfish" creatures. Well, Darwin, Schopenhauer, Spangler, Freud and Nietzsche might also be implicated as "culprits" as well. This should be a spirited dialogue. What if Rifkin is wrong, or only partly right about his optimistic assessment of human nature? What if everyone, or even most people, in our world cannot be convinced of Rifkin's optimistic secular liberal view? Then what? Are we hopelessly doomed? I may have to play devil's advocate, to join forces with the much despised Calvin and Hobbes, or invite others to do so. Is there a "middle way" between utopia and apocalypse, between social idealism and social realism, between liberalism and conservatism, communitarianism and libertarianism, collectivism and individualism?