Self & Society

“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” — Rumi
Dating apps promise connection — but do they really reflect what our hearts are seeking?

This gathering blends gentle conversation with thoughtful reflection. Together, we’ll explore how technology shapes modern romance, what it means to feel truly seen in relationships, and how to nurture meaningful bonds in a digital world.

• What are you truly seeking in a partner?
• How do you know when a connection is real?
• What makes a relationship feel successful — and what makes it challenging?
• Do algorithms help us find love, or do they make us forget what love really is?

We’re an easygoing group that values thoughtful dialogue and genuine connection — exploring love not only as an emotion, but as a way of understanding ourselves and others.

Whether you’re single, exploring, or simply curious, come share stories, listen, and connect with others who value authenticity over swipe culture.
If you value kindness, curiosity, and depth, you’ll feel at home here.

Come join us for an informal philosophical discussion. No prior knowledge or research is required, but an open mind is.
For much of its history, America has celebrated the person willing to leave home, change careers, start a business, or otherwise gamble a comfortable present on an uncertain future. But are Americans becoming less willing to do that?
Nowadays Americans move between states much less often than they once did, and the rate of new-business formation remains considerably below its late-20th-century level. Economist Tyler Cowen has argued that Americans are becoming increasingly complacent - "setting our sights far too low" - and losing some of the country's traditional appetite for change and experimentation. Of course, avoiding risk can be perfectly sensible. Someone supporting seven children, for example, may have excellent reasons not to gamble with their livelihood. But what about someone prosperous enough that failure would only be embarrassing rather than ruinous? Suppose a comfortable office worker dreams of starting a company, becoming an artist, moving overseas, or simply doing something unpredictable - but spends forty years choosing security instead. Is that prudence, or is something valuable being lost?
Further discussion questions:

• Could a society become so good at providing comfortable, predictable lives that it accidentally produces too few adventurers?
• If you can afford to fail, is there something regrettable about arranging your entire life so that you never do?
• Where is the line between courage and mere recklessness?
• Does a society need a certain number of unusually risk-tolerant people even if most individuals are perfectly rational in choosing security?
• Would you rather reach old age regretting a major gamble that failed, or regretting a major risk you never took?

Come join us for an informal philosophical discussion. No prior knowledge or research is required, but an open mind is.
Gossip generally has a bad reputation. To gossip is to be petty and intrusive, and respectable people are supposed to mind their own business.
But perhaps gossip is one of the mechanisms that makes society work? For example, formal rules can punish misconduct only when someone knows about it and is willing to act. Meanwhile, informal reputation can do much more. Employees whispering to one another may discover that an abusive boss treats everyone the same way. Students comparing stories may expose a covert bully. Citizens exchanging forbidden stories may undermine a dictatorship that survives partly by keeping each person ignorant of what everyone else knows. Gossip can enforce good norms precisely because it spreads information outside official channels.
Moreover, there are further, less dramatic benefits of gossip. Sometimes gossip simply tells us useful things about other people: who needs help, who can be trusted, who knows something we need to know, or who might be especially well suited to solve a problem.
Yet the same machinery can enforce terrible norms rather than good ones. Gossip can punish harmless eccentricity, destroy reputations with false accusations, invade privacy, and turn suspicion into apparent fact. And as a story passes from person to person, like in a telephone game, it can mutate into something very different (and much more sensational) than what it originally was.
So when is gossip a social good? When does sharing information about someone become an unjustifiable violation of their privacy? And could a society without gossip function at all?