Thought About Your Life Recently?

As we dig back into the Big Questions of the past, or should I say, the BQ's this extended discussion group has considered in the past, I am reminded of Heraclitus' claim that you never dip your toe into the same river twice.  Putting this into context, this means that even though we may discuss any particular topic again, the group is different, the points of view individuals in the group bring to the discussion are different, and our aged (or evolved) perspectives can put us into a new frame of mind with respect to a topic.

Starting on page 38 of Socrates Cafe, Christopher Phillips is quizzed about why he started the group in the first place, to which he answers, "An unexamined life is not worth living", a classic Socratic quote.  The group of strangers he is meeting with that night take up the thread of this idea, and expand it in many ways.  One woman is said to have complained that an adult life of working with psychotherapists has done nothing to add to her sense of self.  She says that all this self examination has not given her a feeling that she is living a better life today, because of it.

A man says that just to examine a person's life is not the point, but rather to examine it from a philosophical perspective, and he proposes that the question "Who am I" is really the point.  Another says that looking back on your life is pointless, as you only see where you were and what you did.  that only leads to regret,  Looking at how to best live the moment of the now, and maybe with some forward looking is the important thing.  Another says looking back provides guidance for how you should live in the future, and not just to wallow in regret or self-recriminations.  

From there the discussion moves into the importance of life's examination from Phillips' perspective, and how starting these discussion groups is a way he is using to bring meaning to his life.  Until he started doing Socrates Cafe meetings he was adrift in life, and it all felt so very meaningless.  He shares this with his group, and they react with support and bemusement.  

Please come with some ideas about how examining our lives individually can help us, and those around us.  A favorite and possibly unattributable quote I like is, If we are all here in the world to help others, what are the others here for?  Our efforts in BQ are an exercise in helping others, surely.

Back to the Basics

 For quite a while I've had the feeling that BQ has evolved into more of a chat group than a discussion group.  Like we all, I live for the interactions we create as we consider the questions we come up with and that I post in this space.  We see each other in our Zoom meeting, and the check-in time is where we get caught up with each other's lives and activities.  I'm all for that, and it will continue, of course.

What is missing is what I consider to be the in-depth and insightful discussions that the Big Questions should be drawing out of all of us.  Philosophy is the act of asking questions with the innocence of a child and answering them with the rigor of a lawyer, or a philosopher.  Socratic dialectic wasn't a process of finding answers to the questions posed, but rather the progressive exposure of the many ways a question could be turned this way and that, wringing out perspectives that we might not have expected to exist.  Knowledge creeps in here and there, and we end up wiser than when we started.  THAT is the outcome I seek, and that is the outcome I count on all of you to help me, and everyone, to achieve.

I pulled out my copy of Socrates Cafe by Christopher Phillips for inspiration for this week's meeting.  The first page of that text was all I needed to get my philosophical juices flowing.  What is insanity?  That was the question being asked.  What do we do individually, as a family member, as small group members, as a community, as a country, as a society, that include elements of insanity?  How many could we identify?  The book's text lays it out in a clear way.  I'm sure that in a group setting it would take quite some time, and lots of interjections and comments to get to the point, but the seemingly endless questioning was invigorating.  I hope you feel the same.

We can use the same question as our starting point.  What is insanity.  And if you don't have a copy of Socrates Cafe, get one.  It is a great read, and you will be pleased you took the time to read it.

The Art of Powerful Questions

 I ran across a short booklet with this title, and I wondered how I might be able to bend the information it contains to our purposes at BQ.  Here is a link to the book.  It deals with how we think of the questions we ask and the answers we seek, and how, by reframing the questions, new outcomes emerge.  It is subtle and powerful stuff, and worthy of our consideration.

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” —ALBERT EINSTEIN

This quote is pure Socrates, as well as Einstein.  Socrates spent a tremendous amount of time in working through the questions he asked the men of Athens, and how this probing and pushing put them on edge as their assumptions were questioned, and the thoroughness of their thinking was exposed.  They hated him for it, and eventually killed him because of it, but the root of his wisdom was in his use of dialectic dissection of language and argumentation.

Einstein was credited with discovering so many things not by working out the mathematics behind them, but in envisioning the products of that math in forms that could be understood physically or intellectually based on common sense analogies.  Light as both a particle and a wave, at the same time?  Preposterous on the face of it, but the proof was so simple, and so devastating.  Mass and energy are somehow equivalent?  It doesn't make sense on the surface of it (pun intended), but the reality of this fundamental principle lies behind almost everything we know, today.  And the list goes on.

The point of the book, and my hope for our discussion, is that we can take a question and reframe it in a way that the outcome is not what we regularly accept as an outcome, but rather something unique and new.  Philosophically, the classic, Is there a god? might not have a yes or no answer with examples supporting each possibility, but something more nuanced and graded.  Could god be both present and absent at the same time?  Both active in directing the ways of the universe and simultaneously impassive.  Might this be the Clockmaker's Concept of god?  Get things set up, turn them on and then let them run on their own?  Does that mean god existed, but no longer exists?

Or does St. Thomas Aquinas have the correct concept when he says, "God wills the smallest blade of grass to spring forth into being. It is the Eternal Will that regulates the passage of clouds before the sun."  

Things to think about...

Adult Questions II - Jan 20

 Well, it turns out that open-ended questions are popular with BQ attendees.  Several questions from the link I provided last week were raised and discussed by the group.  It felt like a very good session, and I was encouraged enough to use this format again.  Look over the list and select a handful of questions that resonated with you, and bring them to the table.  We would all like to know what interests you.

A question has been submitted by an attendee to get the discussion started. "Tell the story of how you got one of your scars."  I read into the suggestion an ambiguity of the key term, "scar", which could be a physical scar, or perhaps a deeper scar that affects our thoughts and feelings.  You might want to come prepared for what may be shared, or perhaps, with an alternate topic if this one is too personal.

Adult Questions - But are they Big?

 Meeting on Friday, Jan 6, at 7:00 pm.  Check the newsletter or the weekly update for a sign-in link.

For this week's topic I turn to something I have not done before.  If you search for "questions for adults" you can find extensive lists of ice-breaker sorts of questions meant to get people talking.  The subject can be almost anything, but questions that make people reflect on themselves in some way seem to be the most interesting.   I find that people who attend my Big Questions forum LOVE to tell stories of their lives, and sometimes the stories actually relate to the topic I intended.  This week I won't have a specific topic, so there is no pressure to stay on track!

Here is a site with hundreds of questions.  I like 81 as a starting point: If you had a time machine, would you go back in time or into the future?  Sounds like an easy question, maybe, but I bet there will be a wide variety of perspectives on it.  Scan the list and bring your favorite question, and make it Big!

Topic TBD Tonight

 Big Questions is back, meeting tonight at 7:00.  Please join us if you want some friendly and supportive conversation on a topic we will jointly identify when we gather.  Maybe it will be holiday related, maybe not.  But I am sure it will be entertaining.  See you tonight!

You can find the link the Weekly Update under Big Questions.

Next Meeting is Dec. 9

 Hi Everyone!  The Weekly Newsletter included a notice that BQ would be meeting on Friday, Nov. 25.  I think what happened is that the twice monthly schedule was assumed.   Not so fast!  That is Thanksgiving Weekend, and no BQ is planned that Friday.  On the website I showed an anticipated date of December 9, which is still my plan.  Sorry for any confusion!