Group Therapy

Live Streaming Fridays, 6pm Chicago time

Contact me on Twitter if you want to be involved. 

So YouTube has a new feature where it integrates fairly seamlessly with Google Hangouts so you can do live streaming with your video conferences. There are way to accomplish similar feats with Skype, but there are additional steps involved. I believe Skype is probably the more flexible platform, but I'm a big fan of simplicity. Anyway, I would like to start using this feature in order to serve a practical purpose which could loosely be understood as a form of group therapy. It is not in any way clinical or approved by any professional, but I would like to contribute to the positive emotional well being of all participants.

I would like us to practice the art of conversation, where people can learn to be in the presence of others that may hold a different perspective without feeling threatened by them. It would be similar to a debate format, but without winners and losers, so there's not the same kind of antagonism as what you might find in some YouTube hangouts. But there is no reason we should have to hate each other simply because we hold different opinions about things. And we should try to get to the point where we are capable of listening to other points of view without thinking it is a challenge to our own values or perspectives.

In an age where we suffer from information overload, it is not always obvious what it all means, or what practical difference it should have on the way we live our lives. But it is simultaneously a time of great opportunity. All of the world's great wisdom traditions are suddenly available to us, and we need to take the time to figure out how to relate to people that operate out of these various paradigms.

Look here for my blog postings on the subject.