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The last few years, I’ve been part of a life-giving Meetup community whose purpose is “to build community around meaningful conversation through the cross-fertilization of ideas.” It was Pub Theology when I first began attending, then was rebranded as Pub Philosophy after being handed the reins. These days I’m no longer in a leadership position because of our family’s return to full quarantine to protect our unvaccinated baby during the Delta variant, but my hope and intention is to return as a participant in life post-pandemic. In stepping down from leadership, however, I’ve been reflecting back on the experience.
Specifically, I’ve been asking myself, ‘What was true, good, and beautiful about this community?’ Beyond the friendships and particular insights from our eclectic conversations, what aspects of Pub Theology/Philosophy might be gleaned? What do I want take and apply to the rest of my life? That’s when it hit me that what I appreciated most about the community was its overall ethos. Each week we intentionally re-established the expectations for longtime members and newbies alike by reading through the following R.E.S.P.E.C.T. guidelines:
Through weekly repetition and practice these guidelines came to signify something more for me. They were not merely guide rails for healthy conversation. They became more than rules to be gently enforced by the moderator during a 90-minute window on Tuesday nights. The more these guidelines seeped down deep, the more they didn’t go into effect at 6:30 and expire at 8:00. It’s not something to be gleaned and applied like I was thinking before. It’s already happened. These guidelines embody the ideal to which I aspire as a personal ethos.
Over these three years, the R.E.S.P.E.C.T. guidelines became a habit of the heart, mind, and spirit. This is pretty much how I now think, feel, believe, perceive, and behave now. I earnestly try to own my shit (R), listen carefully while putting myself in other people’s shoes (E), be mindful about how different people think and interact (S), meditate about what I’m learning (P), practice self-critical questioning (E), honor other people’s privacy (C), and give people the opportunity to have an open-minded conversation instead of engaging in half-ass, ideological diatribes (T). Those who know me best would no doubt wish to note that my execution of these ideals has plenty of “opportunity for growth,” as the optimists like to put it. No disagreement there. I still fuck up from time to time but, hey, owning that is just a part of “R.”
Back in undergrad a professor taught us Plato’s edict that the unexamined life is not worth living. He convinced me, and it changed my life. What he failed to mention is how examining one’s beliefs and presuppositions would endlessly upset the tribalistic apple cart. I don’t regret this introduction to the world of philosophical inquiry, but I wish he’d let us know about the negative consequences of that change. Likewise, the R.E.S.P.E.C.T. guidelines have truly been formational in solidifying an alternative belief system of ethics and virtues, but I’d be lying if I said this has made my life easier.
Whether it’s familial and cultural conditioning, just a part of the human condition, or some combination of the two I don’t pretend to know. What I do know is that seeing the world, and trying to interact with the world, through the ideal prism of the R.E.S.P.E.C.T. guidelines has sucked. For example, just today I posted the following on Facebook:
This is NOT a rhetorical question:
Why is it so difficult for bright, educated, and even well-intentioned people to grasp the rhetorical difference between understanding and persuasion?
Over the years, a lot of people have treated me like–or even come right out and said–I’m being disingenuous when I tell them my goal is not to persuade them to come to my perspective nor to be persuaded to come to theirs. Instead my default goal the overwhelming majority of the time is mutual understanding. I want to understand their thoughts, feels, beliefs, experiences, and perspectives and I want them to understand mine. This mutual, reciprocated understanding is my goal. Whether or not we end up agreeing with or persuading one another? That’s secondary or even tertiary. So, again I ask, why is it so hard for people to grasp the rhetorical distinction between understanding and persuasion?
Damn it. The experiences at Pub Theology/Philosophy kinda ruined me.
