Life in community is what you make of it. We are a bunch of self-organized folks. If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen. We can tweak our community experience to be more like the community in which we want to live.

In an attempt to create the community he desires, Keegan started a philosophy group a few months ago. I am a member. I have a few reasons for being in the group. One of the big ones is that I realized I was doing a lot of work I didn't really have to think about. I've been in school basically my whole life, and it just felt weird to not be learning things and analyzing stuff. The group reads original sources in philosophy, comes together, and discusses them. Sounds like a recipe for brain work to me.

Unfortunately, I have never had much of an interest in philosophy. The only philosophy class I took in college was Environmental Ethics, which I took because I loved the professor and it counted toward my kind of BS minor. Being such a specific topic in philosophy, it didn't exactly add to my understanding of the area as a whole, or to my familiarity with the vocabulary of philosophy.

The other people in the group are Keegan and Ethan, who have been independently studying philosophy rather intensively, Alex, who took a few classes and contemplates ethics pretty often, and Rayne, who has a masters degree in postcolonial literature and can talk the talk. I feel a bit out of place. I generally find the readings to difficult, dense, jargony, and hard to apply. I often feel that I an gnawing on the texts rather than digesting them.

I have annoyed Keegan thoroughly over the past couple years by telling him that I don't care about philosophy. Well. My work with it over the past couple months has at least gotten me to the point where I can engage in conversation about it and have relevant points to contribute. I think being able to talk about a subject is a big step toward caring about it.