The next meeting of the nameless discussion club will be held Sunday April 26, starting at 20:00. Please let me know if you're coming. Also: Spread the word!
What follows is a report of last meeting's discussion. Scroll down for a summary.
Yesterday there was another fruitful discussion about what should be changed about current-day society. Throughout the discussion we returned to the topic of the lack of individuals' power to utilize their own agency. Why is it that individuals don't follow their inner desires? What societal, social, cultural, and economic pressures are there that lead individuals away from reaching their potential? Now that we've found out that there is in fact a public lack of personal agency, we can start thinking about these new questions. Furthermore, it is time to start utilizing our own agency and the agency that being together in a group has provided us with. For next week, we therefore came up with two exercises--one concerning improving personal authority, and one concerning spirituality in the public space.
Personal authority
We decided to begin to act in accordance with our newfound ideals. What are these ideals? First of all, that we should start listening to our private authority. We are all capable individuals with specific expertise on differing subjects. What right does a man in a suit have, then, to shut us up?--A suit or social position is not a legitimate source of authority; personal expertise however, is. Therefore we should not accept a message of authority at face value, but rather scrutinize the content, using our personal expertise as a solid base on which to build our judgment. When we will start to do this, we will often find that the authority that is used to impose rules or opinion upon us is not based on personal expertise, but on social status or appearance. Why should we then accept these rules and opinions? As an exercise, we decided that for the coming week we will all try and oppose illegitimate authority by saying "No" to it when we encounter it. How does that work? First of all, trust your own opinion. Try to think beyond the ordinary and question the sources of authority. Don't accept something when you think you know better.
Try to oppose by saying no if you dare, or if you don't dare take mental note. Just practice with the idea that not all authority should necessarily be accepted; take action if you wish, but at least toy around with this idea a bit. I've already begun by speaking to a stranger seated at the table next to me on a terrace, even though I thought it would be slightly out of the ordinary to do so (it's a small thing, but hey: it's something).
Spirituality challenge
We discussed the perceived lack of spirituality among ourselves and others around us. What is this 'spirituality', though, that we have been talking about? Some suggestions were being on your own; concentrating on the beauty of things around you; the exaltation of feeling/doing the same thing as another person(s); and expanding consciousness to include past and present without having actively to deal with those things (but widen the sense of the now). For next week, we decided to think about what spirituality means to us personally. As a challenge, we will all try to conceptualize spirituality by thinking of a way in which we can use the public space to get other people to become more spiritual. Imagine, for example, that you were to design a poster: What would that poster look like and how would it make people become more spiritual? As an example, look at the picture below. An artist placed the Dutch word for love in life-size letters in front of the train station this week. Would this make people more spiritual?
So, to sum up, this week we will all privately
1. try to actively question the legitimacy of authority; and
2. come up with our own idea about using the public space to promote spirituality. Next week we will discuss these ideas, so bring yours with you!
In doing so, we will have worked toward improving our own and other people's agency. Next week we will discuss both topics, so please take some time to work on them during this week.
Hopefully I will see you all,
Piet