The Examined Life Club (Books, Discussion, and More)

Inspiration

"The unexamined life is not worth living" is supposedly what Socrates said while on trial for corrupting the youth. This is the ethos that we live by.

A friend recently told me, "I feel driven to Christianity at this time in my life, but one discussion with a Christian convinces me better of it." I think this is a real unfortunate problem for people. The main cause that I gather from people is a desire for meaning but a dislike for groupthink. People with a high level of awareness want to respect their inner voice and use that as a basis for meaning, or if nothing else, want to find a truth that both the inner AND outer worlds agree with.

In this sense, integration seems to be a driving goal of people like myself. When delve into specific subjects like philosophy, mythology, history, or science, I want to see how those subjects relate to each other and the human condition. Thus, I'm less interested in the authority of someone in any particular subject than I am in the relation between those authorities (and my own thoughts).

This type of thought requires a lot of flexibility (integrating ideas can be quite complex and lead to unexpected outcomes), which is something I would extend into any dicussion that we have, and I would ask everyone to be charitable to each other for the same reason.

I would also ask that we rise above the passionless discussions of words and definitions. Words are labels with connotation, but both of those things are still maps relative to the territory (Korzybski). The territory is where the juicy material is.

Plans

I hope this will be unlike any book club that you've ever been to. If you're like me, you've been frustrated with book clubs with very low reading requirements, an excess of conformity, or milquetoast analysis.

One point of difference may be a topic-focused meeting as opposed to a book-focused meeting. We could select a subject for an entire month, then allow our members to read anything and consume anything that they want on that subject, then come together and share our findings.

My vision for the group is still evolving, and I want you all to contribute to that, to help make it something that everyone enjoys.