Community Saturday Gatherings
One Saturday a month we gather to develop our relationship with an important life aspect. We have chosen life aspects which are important and consequential, often things which are rarely discussed openly, if at all.
We have divided these life aspects into four categories and married them with the most appropriate month of the year.
The year of Saturday Gatherings looks like this:
Category: Meaning
January:
Duty is often seen as a negative thing- the things we have to do, even if we don't want to. However, duty is what can give our lives meaning more than anything else. What does it mean to have duty? What is our duty as a parent or child, sister or friend, citizen or just fellow human? We investigate together.
DUTY
OCCUPATION
Our occupation is usually what takes most of our waking ours, and is therefore an extremely central aspect of our lives. Is it a waste of life to have a job that doesn't give us meaning? Does the social status of our occupation matter? Should we work at all? What alternatives are there? How do we plan our careers in such uncertainty?
February:
How is your relationship with yourself? Do you love yourself or hate yourself? Can you handle being alone with your thoughts? Are you ready to put that to the test? If not- why? Is the feeling of being a separated conscious self merely an illusion? Do we have free will at all or are we complete victims to our genes and environments? Surprisingly, there are good answers to all of these questions. Come find out.
March;
SELF
Category: Beauty
April:
Music is a weird thing. There is no truly compelling theory as to why we have evolved to enjoy music, yet it is so central in our lives. There are many kinds of musical experiences that we do not get to have in our daily lives. In this Saturday Gathering we will explore some new ways to make the most out of our acoustic senses. Get ready to be served a few rare auditory cheesecakes.
MUSIC
Art is one of the most fucked up things these days. On the one hand, almost anything can be called art – especially if it doesn't look like art. However if you are not a proclaimed artist, what you make is not art but merely a hobby. This Saturday, we talk about what art is to us – and we produce some.
May:
ART
NATURE
June:
Since us humans have separated ourselves from nature we are the only species who have a concept of it. We were born from and in nature, but we have since long moved out. June in the northern hemisphere is nature at its peak, and a good time to give our old home a real visit. When was the last time you truly connected with nature? Marvelled at a single flower, followed an ant, or smelled the dew on the grass?
Category: Love
July:
What does family mean? What obligations to we have towards those who brought us to life, those we came with and those we ourselves bring to life? Is family love truly unconditional? Should it even be? Can we change our family and choose a new, better one? Why do we have psychological hangups on our parents all our lives, and what do we do with them? What does an ideal family even look like in this day and age?
FAMILY
PARTNERSHIP
August:
Love partnerships is a tough subject. Western culture lead us to believe that there is one true love for us out there, and that we will will find it, and recognise it right away because we will fall in love, and live happily ever after. Clearly, it is a bit more complicated than that, but what is the right answer. How come almost everyone who born in urban environment after 1980 struggles to keep a healthy relationship for longer than say, in a good case 5 years? What are we doing wrong? Is it even worth pursuing?
Belonging to a community is the most important thing we as a society don't know that we're missing out on. We have more stuff in our lives and less people. We've gotten personal independence and lost human connection. Our evolved bodies and minds have however not forgotten, and are yearning for it. In september we focus on our goal- reviving the social community. How are we doing? What can we do better?
September:
COMMUNITY
Category: Time
BODY
October:
We did not choose the survival machines we were born into. This makeup of our ancestors genes that we have to deal with, filled with fluids, bacteria, hormones, proteins, chemical neurotransmitters interacting and bouncing off each other. Also it is slowly deteriorating by power of entropy, slowly breaking apart unit we're done. Thanks, Obama How do we reconcile this? What do we feel about our bodies? Pride shame fear love anxiety, all of the above? Good questions to ask in October.
November:
An extremely central theme in our lives, yet so rarely talked about openly and honestly – even with family members and close friends. Money is freedom, but can also be a cage. What is your personal relationship to money? Some love it, some fucking hate it. Does money corrupt the soul? How much money to we need to be happy? How much should be enough, and how important should it be in our lives. What do other people think and feel about money?
MONEY
Death is ever-present in our lives. It's the Damocles sword constantly hovering over our heads – ready to tear through everything that we are. This moment may be far or around the corner. It comes to us and everyone we hold dear. It's irreversible and has no regards for fear, love or justice. Death is also peace, liberation from all need, pain and responsibility. An eternal rest after a lifetime of surviving life and all it entails. Is life even worth the bother? How great is it really to be a human? And for what purpose? For whom?
December:
DEATH
Gallery
