Intellectual Cafe - Welcome to the Conversation!

Do you sometimes feel self-conscious about dropping non sequiturs into conversations because no one else knows anything about what you’re alluding to? Do you find that you know more than anyone needs to know about certain subjects in the realms of History, Science, Philosophy, the Social Sciences, Literature, the Arts, Current Affairs, et al? Do you enjoy taking what you know & what you’ve observed to try to find the connections between the disparate pieces? In other words, does a large part of you live for the world of ideas?

If the above seems to fit, you're invited to drop in and participate sometime. The simple goal of the group is to provide a place for intellectually oriented conversation - open-ended, wide-ranging, and generated by the participants. The only two expectations we have is that participants arrive prepared to 1) be open-minded & tolerant and 2) make an effort to not dominate the conversation - in fact to actively encourage comments & participation from others.

Please keep in mind that the aim of these discussions is not to relate personal experiences or anecdotes - the idea is to try to keep the conversation on a more abstract level rather than a personal one. In fact, the goal is not even to simply trade opinions – what a friend has called “duelling opinions”. Rather, the point is to try to reach some kind of synthesis, or conclusion about the topic being discussed, and to attempt to reconcile, if possible, conflicting or contrasting opinions.