This past Sunday, I followed one of my dreams and I am pleased to announce that it was a success. For the longest time, I have been wanting to bring together a group of people who wanted to discuss various topics like politics, philosophy and science. I’m aware that these groups already exist, in fact I am aware of a couple with over 100 members that gather in NYC, but I wanted one of my own for a very personal reason. One day, I’d like to open a venue where people can expect to walk in and find themselves in such a conversation, and I needed to prove to myself that not only could the concept work, but I needed to know that I could manage it. Well, so far, so good.
The First Meeting
We gathered in Central Park beneath a statue of William Shakespeare on a hot Sunday afternoon. In all, there were eight of us, our ages ranging from 25 to 40’s. Our backgrounds were quite diverse, from Chile and Colombia, from black and white. To my surprise, we all had relatively disparaging views on religion and I believe we were all either atheist or agnostic. That was not a bother, as we found plenty of other things to explore and a few things to disagree about.
One topic that I brought up was the necessity for a Spanish-speaking rationalist role model. Earlier in the weekend, my girlfriend who is a magazine writer had mentioned to me about the lack of available information in the Spanish language which leads to many unfortunate situations amongst the immigrant population of Latinos and Hispanics. They are afraid of doctors and they don’t trust technology or science. They are attached to cultural remedies and many are blindly religious. This sounded to me like a void of information that was just waiting to be filled and I was interested in getting alternative viewpoints from the many attendees who each had experience in their Spanish-speaking communities.
Everyone’s different perspective really gave the discussion many dimensions. Some felt that the issue would resolve itself, as the new generation of children are already abandoning their parents’ religion and embracing education. Meanwhile, I felt that we still needed a catalyst to empower the individuals to actively seek out education in situations where they are not fortunate enough to have it handed to them. Then came the argument that religion is and always has been a tool of oppression; the idea that leaders would allow their population to be empowered was not likely. In all, it was a very stimulating conversation for me. It took many twists and turns, but I used my abilities as a moderator to keep it on track. When the time came for us to move on to something new, it felt like everyone’s gears were turning in their brains.
There were more interesting discussions after that one. We kicked around the divisive mechanisms of society and wondered what, after religion, political systems, and nationalism, would be our world’s next allegiance divisor. Some would say that technology would split the world into various sects, while one great point was made about the pursuit of pleasure being the trend. Economic markets also appeared to be a looming influence, as one member offered that he could be inspired to speak out about the type of economic system his society was to use.
Another discussion centered around the Idiocracy effect of intelligent couples waiting as along as possible to have children while poor people breed with abandon. It was interesting to discuss the real possibilities of this trend, including its implications for the spread of secularism and intelligence. We also learned a little bit about the realities of the Iraq war from one of our members who is a veteran. At the end, there was plenty to reminisce about and a lot of questions to mull over.
The whole thing lasted about 3 hours, which was longer than I had expected, but the energy never really died down. Even after I declared a stop, the discussion continued for a while. People patiently waited their turn to speak and addressed everyone else with respect. While I suspect things could have gotten a bit heated if we had a religious or spiritual person around to spark arguments, the group had an easy starter run. Everyone expressed their pleasure with it and now it falls on me to find a venue for the next meeting. I’m definitely looking forward to it.
If you are in the NYC area and would like to join us, send me an email and I will add you to the list: andrew@andrewgonsalves.com
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