We engage together in, and record for broadcast, our earnest philosophical dialogues, so that we may:

  1. Enhance our understanding of life and the world in which we live.
  2. Stimulate intellectual curiosity and philosophical exploration in ourselves and others.
  3. Strengthen our intellectual skills of critical thinking and sound reasoning.
  4. Provide a forum for a diversity of thought from a broad spectrum of independent thinkers.
  5. Connect with and form a network among thoughtful and caring individuals, everywhere.
  6. Enjoy the pleasures of intellectually stimulating and philosophically insightful company.
  7. Promote the pursuit of wisdom in everyone.


Civility - Treat everyone with respect. Use helpful, not hurtful language. Listen carefully and patiently when someone else is speaking.

Sincerity - Honest opinions and innocent questions are more valuable than "scoring points" or "looking smart". Strive for intellectual honesty.

Soundness - Favor sound reasoning over emotional rhetoric or sophomoric obfuscation.

Succinctness - Strive to be brief and to the point using understandable language. Speak loud and clear so others can hear.


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Friday, June 27, 2008

Next Live Dialogue - July 2nd, 2008

The next live Thinking Out Loud podcast event will take place this coming Wednesday, July 2nd, at 7:00 pm at our NEW LOCATION!!. Remember, we are not meeting at my office anymore. We are meeting at the Charlottesville Public Library, downtown on Market Street, in the Jefferson Rm on the 3rd floor.

Those of you participating through our cyber connection (Skype), please follow the same procedure as last time. Steve Stokes will be your cyber host. Steve will attempt to add you to our Skype conference call if your Skype ID indicates you are online. I recommend you let Steve know ahead of time if you are planning to participate long distance. It will make his job a little easier as he attempts to get everyone connected. Thanks.

The topic selection process will begin promptly at 7:00. Please arrive on time. Here are some possible topics:

1, What are the essentials for a good life? (minimum requirements)
2. What does it mean to be reasonable and rational?
3. What difference can one make in the big picture of things?
4. What is liberty? (suggested by David Rood)

As always, your topic suggestions are most welcome. Bring your favorite new or recycled questions to add to the list when you arrive. See you soon.

Cheers,

Steve

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Steve Donaldson,
Personal Growth Consultant,
Independent Educator,
Citizen Philosopher
www.citizenphilosopher.com

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Welcome Local Participants

We are moving our Thinking Out Loud recording sessions to a more public venue in order to encourage more local participation. If you live in or around Charlottesville, VA, and would like to participate in our monthly philosophy podcast, join us on the first Wednesday of every month. We will be meeting in the Jefferson Room of the downtown public library, also known as the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library (JMRL). We have the room reserved from 7:00-8:30 pm. Please arrive promptly.

For those new to the Thinking Out Loud project, here is some background. Our meetings are free and open to the public. We record our philosophical dialogues and release them a few days later as podcasts through Apple iTunes. Along with local participants, we have long distance participants who connect with us live through an Internet conference call. The idea is to gather a global community of citizen philosophers and share our thoughts on topics that boggle the mind and vex the soul. We select a topic each time by voting on questions submitted by the participants. You don't have to be a scholar to participate. All thoughtful and caring individuals are welcome. So bring your vexing and perplexing philosophical questions and join us in this ongoing series of philosophical dialogues with everyday people.

For more information, local individuals can call me at 296-5554. Those who wish to participate long distance should email me at "join @ citizenphilosopher . com" (remove the spaces, inserted for spam protection.)

Regards,

Steve

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Steve Donaldson,
Personal Growth Consultant,
Independent Educator,
Citizen Philosopher

Friday, June 20, 2008

Feedback From Far Off Fans

Here are two comments we received recently from fans of our Thinking Out Loud broadcasts:

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Hello Citizen Philosopher;
I'm Simo from Morocco. I've been listening to your recorded philosophical discussions on Skypecast and i've been having a look and reading some headlines from your website on eblog, i appreciate much what i heared and what i read. I encourage you to open such nice windows for high level communication and open access to philosophical knowledge for common people. I Wish you a lot of successs in what you do.
Best Regards
Simo Haoine
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Hey guys,
Great podcast by the way, just found it recently. I'd like to add a Buddhist perspective to this concept of collective responsibility, because when I was listening to the initial talk about human responsibility, I was so intrigued by how close comments came to the idea behind Buddhism, and let me describe what that is. One of the most fundamental concepts in Buddhism is the idea of connectedness, not just between all humans, not just between all life, but a connectedness and inseperable state between you and all of existence - yea, a powerful idea. But what this implies is a universal sense of compassion as well. This means that our responsibility extends to all of existence - it doesn't stop at family, friends, humanity, or life. It extends to everything, with no boundaries. Now, practically speaking, this does not mean we run off and make sure every child in the world is taken care of - we have to deal with our limits. We have a responsibility to our own children, to take care of them. But within our span of our actions, we DO have responsibility to every other child in the world - from deciding to not buy a t-shirt from Walmart that was made with child labor, or to decide not to smoke around a child, or to decide not to litter near a playground (or even at all!), all of these decisions either reflect a sense of compassion with the rest of existence, or not. I hope you find this comment interesting - there is so much more to say! I really enjoy your talks.
Peace,
Lauren
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Thank you Simo and Lauren, for taking the time to write. We are glad you enjoy the podcasts and we love hearing your perspectives. If you would like to participate in our live discussions, let me know and we will get you set up. If you prefer to just listen to the podcasts and post comments on this blog, by all means, keep it up. We love hearing from you.

Cheers,

Steve

Monday, June 09, 2008

The Ethics of Friendship

Greetings All,

The latest Thinking Out Loud podcast has been released on iTunes. The session was recorded on Wednesday, June 4th, and the topic was:

"What are the ethics of friendship?"

Thank you, Deborah Martin, Steve Stokes, and Uriah J. Fields, for your participation. The discussion was insightful and stimulating. For those of you who missed out, here are some of the questions we grappled with:

Are friendships optional? Are they necessary to live the good life? Is there a universal need to give and receive affection? Where do our feelings about friendships come from? Why do we treat our friends the way we do? Are friendships more "disposable" than they used to be? How do friendships come to be? How much is it by choice? How much is it by chance? Does it require willful action? What are friends for? What are the motives for making and keeping friends? How can we know if a friendship is "true"? What do we expect from friendship? How do expectations differ? Are friendships meant to last forever? What are the ethics of ending a friendship? Is friendship an investment? Is it ethical to end a friendship with unequal investment, "an unbalanced account"? Is it ethical to just fade away? Must we know and must we give a reason for ending a friendship? How do we reconcile the need to grow and to be free with the expectations of friendship? Can we ever fail to profit from our friendship "investment" so long as we see friendship as its own reward without any further expectations?

To subscribe to the podcast with your podcast software (such as iTunes or iPodder) copy and past the following link into your software:

www.citizenphilosopher.com/rss/tol_podcasts.xml

If you have iTunes, you can find us listed in the Apple Music Store directory under Podcasts/Society & Culture/Philosophy, or just do a search in iTunes on Thinking Out Loud People. The direct iTunes link is:

phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=214321935

If you don't have iTunes or other podcast software and just want to download the mp3 file directly, use this link:

Listen to the broadcast (mp3)

You are invited to add your thoughts by clicking on the "comments" link at the lower right hand corner of this post.

The next Thinking Out Loud will be Wednesday, July 2nd, at 7:00 pm. No topic has yet been chosen. We will select a topic at the beginning of the next session. I will reserve the time between 7:00 and 7:15 for topic selection, so please arrive on time with your topic suggestions, if you want to participate in the selection process. You can also email me your suggestions ahead of time, whether or not you are planning to attend. The recording session will last one hour as usual. I'll hang around for an additional 15 minutes after the recording for anyone who wishes to critique that particular session or any aspect of the Thinking Out Loud project.

Lastly, let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes on friendship. I don't remember where I found it and I wish I had thought of it during our podcast recording. Nevertheless, here it is - a definition of friendship:

"A friend is someone who knows all about you,...and likes you anyway."

Cheers,

Steve

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Premed Science Tutor,
Citizen Philosopher,
Life Coach
www.citizenphilosopher.com
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