Lately metatheory has been springing up in local coffeehouses all over my native town (Tacoma, WA).
Tacoma is like Seattle’s more working-class cousin with an ongoing brand image problem (The Real Story Behind Tacoma’s Nickname, Grit City) “Intellectual hotbed” has not especially been part of the Tacoma “brand”. Nevertheless, the Zeitgeist picks its spots for its own reasons, so it is what it is!
One of our recent coffeehouse conversations involved a line by line reading of Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment”? (https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/kant_whatisenlightenment.pdf). We read that from cell phones. A couple of us had academic backgrounds. Others were working class. The general vibe was spiritual seeking. Beyond Kant, the conversation quickly expanded to Hegel, Nietzsche, Foucault, and Habermas, all through post-colonialist comparative religious lenses. All this in a Starbucks! (The coffee group is a spin off of a larger group that meets weekly in public libraries or has potluck meetings in people’s homes).
I’ve been using Habermas’s Also a History of Philosophy lately as a portal into Kant, Hegel, and world philosophies in general. The Theory of Communicative action is part of that, but I’m also finding application to post-colonialism and comparative civilizations that go beyond the usual Habermas stereotypes. To share that with my local coffee group, I drafted the essay below. That link also got reposted to a channel where @rufuspollock saw it, and Rufus called for another repost here. So here it is. I’ve been dribbling remarks about “objective spirit” into several current threads here, but this essay is the deeper background for where all that is coming from.
Thank you for sharing those links, it really resonated with me. After reading Pagel’s book about early Christianity and gnostic practices where all attendees were able to share I felt so inspired. Half a year ago I have found a local Christian meditation group where we meet once a month in a circle, read some small texts and contemplate together. We are all equal, all searching and the presence is absolutely amazing.
So great to hear that Starbucks now is an epicentre of such great reunions!
I like local-branded coffee houses better, but Starbucks was convenient for some of the people involved, so fine! It’s rather ironic to be having such humanistic discussions in such a corporate capitalist container! But then again, maybe there is a metaphor lurking there as well! As for Kant and coffee - nothing ironic about that - those two just go together!
Starbucks may well be a good metaphor, because in my view to achieve post-capitalism, we must exapt the resources provided by current capitalism. So repurposing Starbucks spaces for post-colonial discussion groups seems on point.
Plus you never know who might be listening quietly to your conversations while sipping mochaccino!
I also wonder what if alternative “ pockets “ spill over to general society can actually help with the spread of the message that there is another way and there are people who live by it. Not in a preachy kind of way, guilt tripping etc. but literally by their honest presence. Where I live , we have a lot of alternative places, community run cafes, meet ups etc. You do tend to bump into the same people over and over again. It’s a bubble, a great bubble of ´les ecolos’ ( the greens). So there is this separation of us and them and I think it’s done in both ways.
And imagine you go to the Starbucks one day, pick up your usual coffee and accidentally hear your conversation. Maybe you made somebody reflect on something meaningful that day.
To me, that’s cultural change in a nutshell. One way to scale it (and to escape self-referencing “bubbles”) is to do pragmatic outreach that is more action than talk. For that reason, I am currently involved with farming, health care, software development, and a number of other verticals. Not all the people I hang out with read the same philosophy books! But by practicing embodied values and showing up, the opportunity for explicitly values-oriented conversations will arise.
One phrase from my teaching days stands out: “They won’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
Quakers are still nominally within the Christian orbit – perhaps thanks to George Fox who knew his bible very well – and Quaker worship has always allowed all attendees to share when they sensed the inspiration of — let’s just say “the spirit”. I identify with that tradition.
My thinking lately is that following Jesus is one thing and adherence to some formal Christian organization or another is something else. There may be overlap - but I (and others) also see many obvious contradictions in which “Christians” have done many, many things that fly in the face of what Jesus is reported to have taught. So as to whether Quakers - collectively or with respect to specific members of the group - are “Christian” or not strikes me as rather secondary. What people say strikes me as far less interesting than what people do.
Yes indeed, agreed. And I didn’t express myself clearly enough to get this across. But on top of that, it it’s not secondary to everyone, and it is notable that Quakers are still members of Churches Together → Why are Quakers involved in Churches Together? | Quakers in Britain
