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Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:18 am
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Recently I was given the incredible ability to see the Forum. The Forum, where Caesars would roam, and where Seneca and many other brilliant minds stated their thoughts in a, quite literally, public forum.
I've played role playing games based in old times, where they did not have the joys of the internet, but they had to go to a physical location known as a forum. At these forums people would express their ideas. Some would lecture, as there weren't really formal schools, so this would be a place of education. Forums also allowed intelligent people to gather in order to talk out ideas such as life, death, the afterlife, religion, political theory, etc.
So today, what is the point of a forum? We have the ability to reach millions of people, something the likes of which Socrates, Plato, nor Aristotle even fathomed. We are mostly educated beyond the level of the plebeians during Rome's peak. So in theory we should be able to make a forum far more spectacular than anything seen in the past few thousand years.
However, have we done so? First and foremost, forums are based on either a lecture to educate the masses, or a discussion panel based on a concept. We have plethra concepts pinned upon our forum, so at the very least we have that down. This does not seem a forum aimed towards educating the masses, as I'm sure most of you get that enough in school. From an education standpoint, we're applying knowledge so that we can reach the evaluation level. In other words, we take what we know and have learned, so that we can make value judgements.
Many people have done this, more or less, though I must say I am a little taken back by the fact that when given this forum, a lot of people post one or two lines stating the basics of their belief, supplying no support for it. There are a few noteworthy writers, and quite honestly I implore any who read this to check the autism post as almost every post is an indepth and thoughtful post. However, the biggest crime against forum that has been committed is that people ignore what other people have to say. On the forum on a philosophy for life, almost everyone simply pins up their poster child idea of a philosophy, never commenting on the philosophies of others.
There is an incredible asset in forums, and that is being exposed to a handful of ideas we may not have been otherwise exposed to. These ideas are the little pin ups that people do, but instead of evaluating them, we pass them over, post our little pin up, and move on in our existance. We could instead use these little moments as learning moments, to expose ourselves to knowledge that someone else has found important enough to speak on.
The next thing a forum needs is a healthy amount of philosophers. When you simply post up your two cents, instead of giving us a grand discussion, it really isn't a complimentary moment to claim this a forum. Question things, and post up your support. If you say there isn't a god, tell us why. If you think autism is the pwnzr, tell us why. Should you believe anarchy is the root of all that is good, perhaps read a little Paine, Jefferson, the Communist Manifesto, etc., and support yourself as to why anarchy is a political cure. The biggest problem with anarchists is it seems they desire freedom from literacy and philosophy as well as from government.
Finally, for those of you who read this, and think you're too young, I've had a wonderous line of communication with a boy, Kojima, who though young, questioned what was around him. He didn't have the answers, and to most of what we talked about to be honest all I could do was ask slightly more complicated questions, but he asked them instead of simply stating his opinion on a subject and being done with it. Philosophy is the art of asking the right questions; it's not the art of coming up with the right answer when so often there isn't one.
In short, I'm pondering if we can make this more into a forum, instead of the basic, "This is what I think." We are floundering an incredible resource.
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Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:02 pm
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Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 5:09 pm
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I realize what I saw, and more it was being used as an anecdote. I suppose that was the history lecture portion of the forum.
Forum
All right, hopefully that clears some things up that seem to have been an obstacle. Now the first and second definitions, as Calypsophia pointed out, reveal the judicial nature of the forum in early times, though these were still used for public assemblies, not just lawmaking.
The third definition would be the kicker, however. An assembly, meeting place, program, etc., for the discussion of public interest, as we seem to put up points we find of public interest in this forum of ours. By no means do I believe we create laws here, but we do post that which we find interesting.
In Rome so long ago, and Greece as pointed out, not all of the politicians were philosophers. However, their forum was not called "Philosophy & Discussions subForum," which our forum is called. Therefore, in lieu of political maneuvering and lawmaking, I would think this forum would have more philosophy and discussing of philosophies. We have a lot of quickly stating one's thoughts on a subject, and pretending that no one else stated anything.
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Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 8:40 am
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Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 12:22 pm
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Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 12:59 pm
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