Contemporary social gatherings are largely based on 📝consumption—of food, drink, drugs, sports, or other entertainment. Joint consumption only passes the time painlessly by covering up a lack, and leaves us feeling all the more empty. The significance of the superficiality of our social leisure becomes apparent when we contrast that sort of “fun” with a very different activity, 📝play.

Only through the latter activity is there the possibility of getting to know each other’s strengths and limitations, character, and inner resources. Real intimacy comes not from telling about yourself—your work, your relationships, your childhood, etc.—but from joint creativity, which brings out your true qualities, invites you to show that aspect of yourself needed for the task at hand.

Adult friendships seem superficial because they are superficial. The reason we can find little to do besides getting together and talking, or getting together to be entertained, is that our society’s specialization has left us with little else to do. As we move into adulthood, in place of play we are offered consumption, in place of joint creativity, competition, and in place of playmates, colleagues.

~ AfterCharles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity

There are many opportunities for joint consumption but few for joint creativity, or for doing things together about which we care intensely, so, we re-formatted Symposium as a space for just that.

I first wrote about my discovery of co-creation in United In Co-Creation (newsletter).

Contexts

• #ascent-of-humanity (See: The Ascent of Humanity)

• #notecard (See: The Notecard System)

• #our-lexicon (See: Our Glossary)

• #index (See: #index)