I’m really liking how you keep building upon previous posts. I was just talking today about how most people never just stop and think. They continue and think as much is necessary. But actually stopping and engaging in thought absent the need is rare, at least IMO. Also, love how you brought in Dickinson.
Thanks, Steve, for reading along and appreciating the cumulative effect. And I love that as a consolidation of much of philosophy: "let's stop and think." A problem Plato and Socrates returned to a lot about was how to get people to stop and think, not absent the need, but absent the awareness of the need. How do you bring someone to awareness of their need to stop and think? That's a tricky pedagogical task.
Garrett, I'm curious about the role of "conversation" here, which doesn't come up until your last paragraph. Does the examination, organization, and comparison you describe as retreat change if it is done with others rather than alone? For a while, maybe eight years ago, I used to daydream about heaven as a favorite coffee shop where you would sit down with every person you knew in your life and have a conversation with them for as long as you liked. In some cases, this conversation might be a kind of redemption, an opportunity to speak openly and honestly with people in a way that was impossible before. But in other cases it might look like what you are describing: looking over common experiences and seeing them better by comparing perspectives and filling in the gaps.
I’m really liking how you keep building upon previous posts. I was just talking today about how most people never just stop and think. They continue and think as much is necessary. But actually stopping and engaging in thought absent the need is rare, at least IMO. Also, love how you brought in Dickinson.
Thanks, Steve, for reading along and appreciating the cumulative effect. And I love that as a consolidation of much of philosophy: "let's stop and think." A problem Plato and Socrates returned to a lot about was how to get people to stop and think, not absent the need, but absent the awareness of the need. How do you bring someone to awareness of their need to stop and think? That's a tricky pedagogical task.
Garrett, I'm curious about the role of "conversation" here, which doesn't come up until your last paragraph. Does the examination, organization, and comparison you describe as retreat change if it is done with others rather than alone? For a while, maybe eight years ago, I used to daydream about heaven as a favorite coffee shop where you would sit down with every person you knew in your life and have a conversation with them for as long as you liked. In some cases, this conversation might be a kind of redemption, an opportunity to speak openly and honestly with people in a way that was impossible before. But in other cases it might look like what you are describing: looking over common experiences and seeing them better by comparing perspectives and filling in the gaps.