Firstly, thank you for visiting. I am no deep thinker but I like to tinker with philosophy. And every person I know who has a philosophical tendency likes to talk about it with others, hence the need for a blog and for meetings. I hope we can all develop our understanding together.
For the record, January 2010 is not when I started doing this. I started having discussion groups at EUUF in about 1998, I think. They started being held at the Fellowship at first, but switched to my house so we could more comfortably add dinner and wine, and have more comfy chairs to sit in. So in that respect I trace the lineage of Big Questions back for maybe 22 years or so. And in that much time I've had the pleasure to lead discussions of certain questions several times. Practice makes perfect!
I've tried having questions prepared, including readings and pre-meeting homework. That never worked, though. People would rather come and just sit and listen, or talk in response to what someone else said. "Real" philosophers like to build arguments, cite elements of logic, or do thought experiments that prove or disprove some part of the topic. Big Questions didn't ever seem to go in that direction.
The virtual BQ we did a couple of weeks ago was far better for keeping on track. Maybe people are getting comfortable talking to one another in virtual space now, since that seems to be the only safe and reliable way to communicate. In a sense, we have all willingly become the proverbial "brain in a jar" in cyberspace, reduced to only our visage on a screen. Maybe we should resurrect the movie The Matrix and re-examine some of the philosophical issues that underlie it. We are living a Matrix Life, it seems.
As this moves forward feel free to post questions we can all ponder, and then discuss in an upcoming session. I have resources and I’m not afraid to use them!