Vancouver Curiosity Club!

VIFF movie outing - public screening, optional short chat after.
Short summary
A lot of animated films ask you to choose a side.
Princess Mononoke does something more grown-up and more painful.
The forest is not innocent.
Industry is not simply evil.
The gods are terrifying.
The humans are desperate.
Everyone is wounded, hungry, proud, and half-right.
That is what makes this one of Miyazaki’s greatest films.
It is not a clean environmental fable. It is a war between ways of living, and the movie refuses to let anyone escape with a simple moral slogan.
This is the kind of film that deserves a room: beautiful, furious, mythic, political, and still hard to reduce.
A few questions already sitting in my head

• “Who is the film most sympathetic to, and does that change as you watch?”
• “Is coexistence actually possible here, or just the least impossible hope?”
• “What does the film understand about rage?”
• “Are the gods sacred, monstrous, or both?”
• “Does Lady Eboshi feel like a villain, a realist, a builder, or all three?”
• “Why does this movie make every easy answer feel dishonest?”

🧠⚠️ What should AI never be allowed to do for us? - Magnifica Humanitas

Interfaith / philosophy discussion - reading packet provided.

Short summary

Most AI debates get boring fast.
One side says: relax, it’s just a tool.
The other side says: panic, the machines are coming.
Too easy.
The better question is more uncomfortable:
What should AI never be allowed to do for us - even if it can do it efficiently?
Care for the lonely?
Teach children?
Choose who gets hired?
Write our apologies?
Mediate our friendships?
Decide who is risky, useful, visible, employable, or disposable?
That is where Magnifica Humanitas gets interesting.
The document is not saying “AI is evil.” It is also not saying “AI is neutral.” It asks whether we are building technologies that serve human beings, or systems that quietly redesign human beings into things that are easier to measure, rank, predict, manage, and discard.
That is a much better conversation than “AI good / AI bad.”

And to be very clear: this is not a Catholic-only event.
Religious people, spiritual people, agnostics, atheists, skeptics, tech people, non-tech people - all welcome.
The point is not conversion.
The point is not a sermon.
The point is not “the Vatican has all the answers.”
The point is asking whether secular tech culture is missing something important when it talks about human value only through productivity, convenience, intelligence, scale, and output.
Because maybe the most dangerous AI question is not:
“Can it think?”
Maybe it is:
“What kind of human beings are we becoming around it?”

A few questions already sitting in my head

*“What is one human thing you would not want automated, even if a machine could do it efficiently?”

• “When does help become replacement?”
  *“Can AI imitate care so well that people stop expecting real care from each other?”
• “Is dignity just a religious word, or do non-religious people need it too?”
  *“What happens when a system treats you as a profile, risk score, output, or data trail instead of a person?”
• “What hidden suffering are we willing to ignore because digital life is convenient?”
  *“Does AI make us more creative, or more dependent on ready-made answers?”
• “What kind of weakness should be protected instead of upgraded away?”
  *“If AI reveals what a society loves, what does our society seem to love most: truth, profit, speed, control, comfort, or real human relationship?”

How the afternoon will go
We’ll start with one question:
“What is one way AI or algorithms already shape your daily life without asking permission?”
Then I’ll give a short reset on the reading packet:
Babel vs Jerusalem.
Dignity before efficiency.
AI as tool, not person.
Human beings as more than data, labour, output, or performance.
The common good.
Hidden costs.
What it might mean to stay human.
After that, we open the room.
Not a tech conference.
Not a church event.
Not culture-war sludge.
Not everyone turning their worldview into a billboard.
A serious room, but not a stiff one.
Come ready to disagree carefully.

Reading
Magnifica Humanitas -
my summary of it :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14_5C0FIh6IEZdnK_HUFgTL0iA4jvtTkV/view?usp=sharing

🌿🌇 Queen Elizabeth Park sunset walk - gardens, views, and a slower Saturday
Easy outdoor social walk/talk - beginner-friendly, not a serious hike.
Short summary
Not every Saturday needs to become a project.
Sometimes the better move is simpler:
Walk somewhere beautiful.
Talk to decent people.
Look at the city from above for a minute.
Let the evening slow down before it disappears.
We’re meeting at Queen Elizabeth Park for an easy outdoor social walk/talk around sunset.
This is not a workout.
Not a serious athletic hike.
Not a “let’s crush a route” situation.
Just a relaxed Curiosity Club evening: gardens, views, conversation, and the kind of slower Saturday that Vancouver is actually good at when we stop rushing through it.
A few questions already sitting in my head

• “Why do some places make people talk more honestly?”
• “Does walking make conversation easier than sitting across a table?”
• “What does the city look like when you’re not inside it for once?”
• “When was the last time you had a Saturday evening that did not feel eaten by errands?”
• “Are we better at relaxing, or just better at scheduling relaxation?”

VIFF movie outing - public screening, optional short chat after.
Short summary
It is very easy to be smug about Titanic.
Too famous.
Too big.
Too romantic.
Too many people have already cried over the door.
And yet.
The movie still works.
Partly because James Cameron understands spectacle. Partly because the romance is built with embarrassing confidence. Partly because the class story is not subtle but still lands. And partly because the whole film is really about memory: an old woman telling the story of the moment when her life split in two.
That is what makes this worth seeing with people.
Not ironic nostalgia.
Not “is there room on the door?” discourse for two hours.
A real conversation about sincerity, disaster, class, image, memory, and why some massive popular movies survive the jokes made about them.
A few questions already sitting in my head

• “Why does Titanic still work, even after all the parody?”
• “Is the romance simple, or exactly as simple as it needs to be?”
• “What does the film understand about class without being subtle about it?”
• “Does the spectacle deepen the emotion, or overpower it?”
• “Why does Rose’s memory frame matter so much?”
• “Is this a great film, a great popular film, or are those the same thing sometimes?”