I'll try to capture some of what happened Sunday night by articulating as best I can some of the questions that arose in the course of the discussion:
1. Are we--or should we be--a support group for people who are trying to escape from the psychological allure of our popular "culture of distraction," and from the spiritual tyranny of "Mother Culture" (Daniel Quinn's term), in our lives?
2. To what degree does each member of a social capital-intensive community (of the kind we would be interested in) need to buy into the interests of each of the other members? How much overlap in our individual desires and visions is necessary for community coherence and effectiveness as a community?
3. How much does the coherence of the community depend on common interests at all, on the one hand (such as the common interests in Henry's examples, of the Beat generation, or the members of the Royal Society), and how much does it depend on spending "face time" together with each other, sharing holidays, meals, projects, other affiliations (e.g. church membership)?
4. In what way is the desire to make an immediately better world for ourselves related to the desire to improve the lot of mankind in general? If we have any desire for our project to have a positive impact on the condition of humanity, is it necessary to build this intention into what we do from the very beginning? (Henry says yes, Peter says no.)
Pierce, Mark, Stephanie, Billy, Diane & Henry, please feel free to emend and elaborate.
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