The Calgary Philosophy Meetup

Rather than elevating spiritual selflessness, Christianity spread by appealing to the lowest human motives — fear of punishment and desire for reward — turning Heaven and Hell into tools of spiritual self-interest rather than principles of intrinsic value. This corruption reduces faith to a transactional system that caters to the most hedonistic and unreflective attitudes, betraying the essence of spiritual life.
D. Divine Teleology, Heaven and Hell

https://kennethsmithphilosophy.com/end08.php

One of Hollywood’s most celebrated films, Casablanca follows the cynical and dashing Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a nightclub owner in the Moroccan city of Casablanca during World War II. Rick’s past unexpectedly catches up with him when Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) — the woman who broke his heart — arrives in his gin joint with her fugitive husband, desperately seeking help to escape the Nazis. As he wrestles with his decision, the film explores ideas of exile and displacement, the difficulty of remaining neutral in love and war, the inescapability of the past, and the power of luck. Casablanca was initially a solid box-office success and has over time become a classic of American cinema for its memorable dialogue and iconic performances.

Roger Ebert: "If there is ever a time when they decide that some movies should be spelled with an upper-case M, Casablanca should be voted first on the list of Movies."

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Join the Toronto Philosophy Meetup to discuss the holiday classic Casablanca (1942) directed by the Hungarian filmmaker Michael Curtiz, recently voted the 63rd greatest movie of all time in Sight & Sound's international survey of film critics and scholars. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1944, winning for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Fun fact: the film was rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa.

Please watch the movie in advance (102 minutes) and bring your thoughts, reactions, and queries to share with us at the meeting. You can stream it with a viewing link to be posted on the main event listing here.

A trailer.

We'll be joined by many other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at this meeting — https://www.meetup.com/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/312442380/

Check out other movie discussions in the group, currently happening about once or twice a month.

South Park got its fame from a small skit where there was a line that went something like: “And what’s Christmas about?” “Presents!” one of the characters answered. That’s what a lot of people think these days. But as thoughtful people, let’s take a look at what the spirit of Christmas is really about. What did Christ try to teach the world about 2000 years ago, and have we “gotten the message?”

A little about our host:
Garrett is a programmer turned award-winning software inventor turned entrepreneur (http://platerate.com/) is his company. His hobby is writing and discussing practical philosophy, and he does life coaching on request to help people live happy, moral lives. He is also the executive director of The Free Thinker Institute (http://freethinkerinstitute.org/), which aims to create a community that helps members increase happiness and decrease harm for themselves and those they can influence.
Format: Lecture and discussion
Note: social time for our community 15 minutes before the presentation.
To get familiar with our past events, feel free to check out our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmixGB9GdrptyEWovEj80zg
After registering via zoom, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
We publish our event recordings on our Youtube channel to offer our help to anyone who would like to but can’t attend the meeting, so we need to give this clause. If you don’t want to be recorded, just remain on mute and keep your video off.

Here’s our legal notice:
For valuable consideration received, by joining this event I hereby grant Free Thinker Institute and its legal representatives and assigns, the irrevocable and unrestricted right to use and publish any and all Zoom recordings for trade, advertising and any other commercial purpose, and to alter the same without any restriction. I hereby release Free Thinker Institute and its legal representatives and assigns from all claims and liability related to said video recordings.

Let's try something new. For the next dozen weeks or so, starting 4/17/2022, we are going to live-read and discuss Aristotle's ~Nicomachean Ethics~. What is new and different about this project is that the translation, by Adam Beresford (2020), happens to be rendered in standard 'Murican English.
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From the translator's "Note" on the text:
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"This translation is conservative in interpretation and traditional in aim. It aims to translate the text as accurately as possible.
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"I translated every page from scratch, from a clean Greek text, rather than revising an existing translation. ... I wanted to avoid the scholars’ dialect that is traditionally used for translating Aristotle.
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"I reject the approach of Arthur Adkins, Elizabeth Anscombe, and others who followed Nietzsche in supposing that the main elements of modern thinking about right and wrong were unknown to the Greeks, or known to them only in some radically different form. My view of humanity and of our shared moral instincts is shaped by a newer paradigm. This is a post-Darwinian translation. (It is also more in line with the older, both Aristotelian and Christian view of human character.)
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"Having said that, I have no interest at all in modernizing Aristotle’s ideas. All the attitudes of this treatise remain fully Greek, very patriarchal, somewhat aristocratic, and firmly embedded in the fourth century BC. My choice of dialect (standard English) has no bearing on that whatsoever. (It is perfectly possible to express distinctively Greek and ancient attitudes in standard English.) ... I have also not simplified the text in any way. I have translated every iota, particle, preposition, noun, verb, adjective, phrase, clause, and sentence of the original. Every premise and every argument therefore remains – unfortunately – exactly as complex and annoyingly difficult as in any other version in whatever dialect.
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"Some scholars and students unwarily assume that the traditional dialect has a special connection with Greek and that using it brings readers closer to the original text; and that it makes the translation more accurate. In reality, it has no special tie to the Greek language, either in its main philosophical glossary or in its dozens of minor (and pointless) deviations from normal English. And in my view it certainly makes any translation much less accurate.
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"I will occasionally refer to the scholars’ dialect (‘Gringlish’) and its traditional glossary in the Notes."
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Here is our plan:
1. Read Intro excerpts or a summary to gain the big picture.
2. Read a segment of the translated text.
3. Discuss it analytically and interpretively.
4. Repeat again at #2 for several more times.
5. Discuss the segments evaluatively.
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Zoom is the project's current meeting platform, but that can change. The project's cloud drive is here, at which you'll find the reading texts, notes, and slideshows.