What we’re about
The Symposium is a community dedicated to exploring life's questions with use of various guiding texts. Since Plato, philosophy was considered a devotional activity, emerged from the mythic age, among lovers and inspired poets, casting light into their world with the aid of reason. Let us familiarize ourselves with the wisdom tradition, uncover new shapes of thought, and find the great freedom that comes from seeing the lifeworld of our connected selves.
By sharing together we create an open space for fresh insights, whether through ourselves or from others. It is through the light of our questions that we stay connected to the true, even as the depth of our ignorance is continually revealed. Yet as we cleanse the mirror, we find unique harmony between what is thought and spoken, for wisdom to usher in, and for the spirit of philosophical friendship to take hold.
Let us honor that space together.
Upcoming events
1
Spaceship Earth: Truth, Story, and Reworlding
Kapéj Coffee, 1447 N Sedgwick St, Chicago, IL, USIn preparation for Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium, let us explore the interplay between truth and rhetoric, poetry, worldview, and sense of life. For this, we will take an unconventional onway into the topic. Linked below is a video of the original ride-through of Epcot's Spaceship Earth which you should view before joining our freewheeling discussion.
Philosophical themes:
-How does the being put through the immersive experience of our "human story" of Spaceship Earth relate to actual truth? Can you tell another human story?
-Consider Nietzsche's three modes of reading history - the critical, the antiquarian, and the monumental - and how it applies. This ride certainly is in the monumental mode. However, it was also sponsored by AT&T which is reasonable grounds for critical suspicion. If the monumental mode creates an integrated vision within the experiencer, does the critical mode lead to fragmentation? This brings up questions of culture and values.
- The ride's positive vision is connected to the human story of dialogue and communication. How does that compare to the positive vision of other stories such as that of communism.
-Consider myth as expressed by Joseph Campbell (below)The Spaceship Earth ride explores the human story through the role of communication across the ages. To appreciate the inspiration for Spaceship Earth let's flashback to the early 1980’s:
Disney wants to build a new theme park that would be an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (aka, EPCOT). They also wanted an optimistic, hopeful centerpiece for the park (but something different than a castle) something to which all mankind can relate to inspire future generations. They decided on a giant sphere, the shape that reflects the Earth — the “ship” on which we all travel every single day of our lives. Disney enlisted the help of sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury to bring this concept to life. Bradbury helped write the original storyline for the ride and contributed to the exterior design.Spaceship Earth now stands as the slow-moving ride inside the geosphere at the park's entrance. The ride has been revamped in various incarnations, earlier narrated by Walter Cronkite, later by Jeremy Irons, and today by Dame Judy Dench. The ride is a journey through the art of human communication, from cave paintings to the invention of papyrus "paper", to a common alphabet, to the movable-type printing press, to the explosion of art in the renaissance, to mechanical reproduction on a grand scale to films, television, radio, internet.
Below is a classic early version (1994) narrated by Jeremy Irons commonly regarded as the most inspired. The ride begins after the song "Tomorrow's Child" which once featured at the ride's finale as we journeyed through the rainbow tunnel after glimpsing the future vision of Earth with energizing colors and lights from among the stars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM1O69qumhw"Our mythology now, therefore, is to be of infinite space and its light, which is without as well as within. Like moths, we are caught in the spell of its allure, flying to it outward, to the moon and beyond, and flying to it, also, inward. On our planet itself all dividing horizons have been shattered. We can no longer hold our loves at home and project our aggressions elsewhere; for on this spaceship Earth there is no "elsewhere" any more. And no mythology that continues to speak or to teach of "elsewheres" and "outsiders" meets the requirement of this hour. And so, to return to our opening question: What is — or what is to be — the new mythology?"
-Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live byBILL MOYERS: There’s that wonderful photograph you have of the Earth seen from space, and it’s very small and at the same time, it’s very grand.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: You don’t see any divisions there of nations or states or anything of the kind. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come.
-Joseph Campbell, The Power of MythREQUIRED VIEWING: Please turn off the lights and enjoy the ride
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM1O69qumhwOptional reading: Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History. Full text or summary here: https://www.johnathanbi.com/p/the-uses-and-abuses-of-history-for-life
In general, let's talk freely about whatever comes from the video and ride. Enjoy this fun little slice of classic Americana.
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