About 25 persons attended our meeting on September 24. I am not forgetting to change that previous sentence in each month's reminder; it is just that we usually do get about 25 people, and I usually forget to take an exact head count. We split into three discussion groups, with each group taking a different question. The questions discussed were:
1) What should we live for?
2) What does it mean to be conservative?
3) What are the influences that determine the way you live? Decisions you make?
For the meeting on Saturday, October 22, we will prime the list of questions with two questions from the last meeting that were not discussed. They are:
4) What does it mean to be a pacifist?
5) What does future technology have in store for us?
The remaining unselected questions proposed at the last meeting were:
6) What is time?
7) What do you hope to gain from the Socrates Café ?
8) How should we handle today's unpleasant realities?
9) What should be taught to the next generation? Why?
10) What are the characteristics of a good question?
These last questions will not automatically be carried forward to the questions list of this Saturday's meeting, but participants are free to propose any of them again if they wish.
At the last meeting we experimented with a format change that had been suggested by several persons at the previous meeting. We brought the group discussions to an end fifteen minutes early, and reconvened as one large group to hear summaries of the discussions presented by a designated speaker from each group. At the end we voted on whether or not to continue this format change. The format change was voted down by a substantial majority. The opinion of the majority was that hearing summaries of discussions in which they had not participated was insufficiently rewarding to compensate for cutting short their own discussions. It didn't work out, but it was a good idea, and I am glad we tried it.