What we’re about
This is a group for people who want to get together and talk about things from the every day happening (including news and politics) to the philosophical.
In person conversation is a part of what makes and made us human. Technology is great, but the greatest technology - our greatest tool - is spoken language, and our ability to use it in real time in a forum.
This group is inspired by the original forum. You know - the Roman one in Rome that is now in ruins. So is ours...because we have allowed it to move too much online instead of continuing to have the courage to meet in person (socially distanced and outside when possible and practical, as in the original forum) to discuss all manner of things.
Communication and the ideas and relationships that result do not happen in the past. They don't happen in the future. They only happen now, when real people meet in the moment. And the best way to do this is in real time, without delay, in person - just like all humans have ever done it for millions of years - either around a fire or a forum...today's cafes, parks, or bonfires.
So join us to do what humans do best - talk and learn with and from each other in person, so that the medium of communication is not merely words/symbols communicated through other symbols, but is direct. That is, also communicated through body language, including movement in relationship to all the people and sounds actually around us in a real "group chat", not a virtual one through Zoom or whatever.
It may no be as safe as virtual communication, but with masks closer up or without masks outside and socially distanced, we can better realize what it is to be human - to communicate directly with one another.
All this talk of "humans" comes from the fact that I am an anthropologist - an applied sociocultural anthropologist. And all this talk of direct communication in real time comes from my also being a psychotherapist. But this group is not just primarily about the big, anthropological picture or the small private one. It is about the public one that happen best in open fora between people willing to discuss all manner of things that matter to them in person with all their direct means of communication at their disposal.
I look forward to meeting you at a real meet-up based on and so a continuation of the first ones around a camp fire to the Forum itself in Rome.
Let's contribute to the rekindling and rebuilding of in person community by simply meeting in our own fora to talk directly about things that matter to us just like humans have always done unmediated by technology other than good old spoken language communicated in person to facilitate learning about ideas and one another with and from each other.
In other words, let's just meet to enjoy talking about things in person : ).
