Greetings, KayR, and NtFs,
Where freedom for "Free Nontheist Friends" might further emerge online in these regards is an interesting question (for me), in that "Free Quakers" seem to emerge in writings that include historical contexts, and in sociocultural anthropological "milieus" (discourses or sub-cultures). What further aspects of "Free Nontheist Quakers" might you be interested in? It seems like we on this NtF email list could hold online "NtF Meetings" (in the manner of Quakers) - but also as a kind of free meditation opportunity for nontheist friends - if people are interested, with the opportunity to talk further face-to-face at the rise of Meeting about contemporary "Free Quakers," for example.
For me with inklings toward freedom and f/Friendliness, I find a kind of freedom in soaking in the Harbin Hot Springs warm pool, with many parallels with sitting in Quaker Meeting with the accordant centering down which occurs. Thinking out of the box, I'm curious how too anyone interested - Quakers/Friends are welcome - might soak virtually and socially in the Harbin warm pool, with its many parallels to going to Friends' Meeting, and re conversing further about contemporary "Free Quakers," as well. (I'm an anthropologist who studies the actual and the virtual, the physical and the digital. And here's another anthropologist, Nick Seaver, thinking along related lines - https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1039895239127789568 - in a fascinating, FLOURISHING online talk, if interested).
Friendly regards, Scott
~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg (here's the Harbin gate in Google Street
View - where you can "walk" down the road '4 miles' to Middletown and 'amble' around
the streets there, if inclined)
~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook
~ http://bit.ly/HarbinBook ~
* *
Hi JohnM and Nontheist Friends (NtFs),
How to create flourishing fellowship or community (or connectedness) online is an interesting and great question that NtFs (and Quakers) in particular might be able to contribute to - and ethically too (which ethics' questions Quakers have contributed to in uniquely Friendly ways historically). (There have been many many rigorous social science studies about ways in which technologies, and in particular, the internet, potentially shape or 'co-constitute' a kind of alienation among people ... many from a Marxian perspective, but some from a Weberian angle too, among many theoretical approaches - e.g. political science, economics, sociology, anthropologically, etc. ... but also many studies which suggest that sociality increases greatly with distributed information technologies and social media for communicating, thus the opposite of alienation is occurring due to technologies' influences on people). Much much has been written in these regards.
Online NTQuaker Meeting with a focus on fellowship could be very beneficial. (Here again, by way of example, is an online NtF Meeting I held - https://youtu.be/-HjY4PBOLT8 - in 2015, with another 2nd Silent Meeting here - https://www.youtube.com/Helianth - to give you an idea of how they could work in group video).
How might we NtFs not only hold Free Online NTQuaker Meeting, in the manner of Friends, but also explore creating flourishing fellowship or community?
Sincerely, Scott
p.s. JohnM, if you reply to nontheist-friends@googlegroups.com then your email goes to all people on this NtF email list - per thread.
* * *
[GABA-STAMMTISCH] Sending 10th grade student to Germany - any advice?
(email thread - gaba-stammtisch@yahoogroups.com)
Hi Michaela,
I spent my 'junior year' in Munich through a Reed College (in Portland, Oregon) program, taking classes at both LMU and through this program in Olympiazentrum, while living in Studentenstadt (and later for a short time in Garching). The credits from this year in Germany on my Reed transcript in the US surprisingly didn't transfer easily.
(Please keep in mind online World University and School, which is CC-4 MIT OCW-centric, and seeks to offer online Bachelor degrees first in English, but eventually even in German - as well as eventually Ph.D., Law, M.D. - defining medicine online anew - and I.B. high school degrees as well - and in all ~200 countries' official languages with time. Here's the beginnings of The College at WUaS - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/The_College_at_World_University_and_School. WUaS is currently anticipating beginning accrediting with the state of California in late October 2018, with final applications due in February 2019, and then concurrently with WASC senior (Both Stanford and UC Berkeley, for example, are accredited by WASC senior). Students, for planning purposes, will be taking some of the ~2,400 MIT OCW courses in English, and in group video conferencing with instructors; because of the CC-4 licensing of MIT OCW, WUaS degrees will be free-to-students, where WUaS will seek reimbursement from governments' ministries of education per student per year - and per a MIT executive director of OCW too ).
Cheers, Scott
- worlduniversityandschool.org
- https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch
- https://twitter.com/WUaSPress?lang=en (planned in all 7097 living languages with machine translation)
P.S. I was living with a Quaker family in Garching, near Munich, for 2 1/2 months here.
* * *
KayR, Amanda and NtFs,
Brainstorming-wise, and in terms of "freedom" - and "Freeing Quakers" I think it would be interesting, re exploring growing an online NtF Quaker Meeting, to do so a little like we share on this email list, and a little like soaking in the Harbin warm pool which is open 24/7 (with its parallels to Quaker Meeting). So, for example,- and thinking out of the box - instead of picking a specific day and time of the week to meet for "Non-theist Friends' Meeting" in group video (like going to Quaker Meeting in a particular locale or Friends' Meeting House) we could create both a virtual realistic NtF Meeting House or space or similar, as well as a Harbin warm pool, and could go in to these from our home computers whenever. NtFs could be there in video in this realistic virtual earth/Meeting House on Sundays potentially, but so would avatar bots (like avatars in many video games these days) now realistic. Some avatar bots would be real people, other avatar bots would be virtual (like characters in movies, but newly interactive), so this space would have sociality, but in new ways mediated by avatar bots some actual people / some virtual people.
So all of this - given that it's easy to access - would facilitate Free NtF Meeting, with centering down, with sociality with other NtFs, but also potentially 24/7 - facilitating more freedom.
And anyone who is interested in sharing Meeting together in group video Hangouts can request this on this list, and some of us could Meet in video together. How to facilitate and grow from a flourishing actual Quaker Meeting - is a question I'm thinking about further?
Friendly cheers, Scott
PS there is precedent for this: I google searched on "quaker meeting on sea turtle island in second life" and found, for example -http://scottmacleod.com/
Sharing some of this here as well - https://plus.google.com/u/3/
PPS I blogged too about this thread today here - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/09/papaveraceae-where-freedom-for-free.html ...
... so centering down, and, inner releasing actions''meditations' ~ and socially ... where freedom and "Free Quakers" (and free hippies, too) happen re centering down (or easing meditation) ...
* *
Papaveraceae: Where freedom for "free NtF friends" might further emerge online, GABA Re: Sending 10th grade student to Germany, WUaS Accreditation ahead, Parallels to soaking in Harbin warm pool virtually, so centering down 'meditations' ~ hippies too https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/09/papaveraceae-where-freedom-for-free.html ~
Papaveraceae: Where freedom for "free NtF friends" might further emerge online, GABA Re: Sending 10th grade student to Germany, WUaS Accreditation ahead, Parallels to soaking in Harbin warm pool virtually, so centering down 'meditations' ~ hippies too https://t.co/OWhbPqcRIN ~— scottmacleod (@scottmacleod) September 16, 2018
https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1041465540861022208
* *
As a further thought re this "Free Quakers?" thread, I searched on "Richard Dawkins twitter problems with religion" and found the following Tweets by him, all of which speak to me a bit about the freedom of atheist Quakerism. I appreciate the tradition of Quakers in another way re the potential for Non-theist Friends / NtFs to contribute to Quakerism via Friends General Conference / FGC for example, with the accordant benefits that Friends/Quakers have shared with, taught and learned from many peoples over time. NtFs seem at the same time to benefit from non-theism re some of these Tweets too:
Richard Dawkins twitter problems with religion
https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/986033489333145600?lang=en…
-https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/896502206144401409?lang=en…
-https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/992052680821497857?lang=en…
-https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/1033382870088278017?lang=en…
-https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/897103026103570432?lang=en…
-https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/406072496593453057?lang=en…
-https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/897067391309541376?lang=en…
-https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/688960883154898952…
-https://twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/495828357645606912?lang=en…
@WorldUnivAndSch~
Richard Dawkins problems with religionhttps://t.co/jMiW2VydyI— scottmacleod (@scottmacleod) September 16, 2018
-https://t.co/19s14TnW8n
-https://t.co/B3vpXhdgYE
-https://t.co/EoB3PAoOTB
-https://t.co/Rv8NLjY85L
-https://t.co/dpQKLBG3XZ
-https://t.co/V16tm5dZXt
-https://t.co/zN7h80F6Sa
-https://t.co/UZzMPApHHX@WorldUnivAndSch~
https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1041357520109887489
*
...