led by James Park, existential philosopher and Humanist Campus Minister
These events are organized into 4 groups:
Which of these proposed programs would you like to attend?
We are often confused about our emotions of love.
This discussion will offer an extended definition of romantic love
and a 180-question test to determine how well our own feelings
correspond with the conventional state of being 'in love'.
First we will distinguish romantic love
from three other phenomena with which it is often confused:
(1) sexual attraction,
(2) mate-selection & marriage, &
(3) familiarity.
Then we will briefly discuss the 26 features of romantic love.
And we may answer as many of the 180 questions as we like.
Romantic love is sudden, blind, uncertain, worried, fantastic,
manipulative, ecstatic, projecting, preoccupied, compulsive, & overwhelming.
If you would like to see all 26 of the features of romantic love,
click these magic blue words: How Do We Know If We Are In Love?
Movies, television, popular songs, and novels
all train our feelings into the wonderful delusion of romance.
We have been taught what emotions to expect
and we attempt to re-create them.
Once we recognize that romantic love is an invention of culture
rather than a natural phenomenon,
we can abandon these fantasy feelings
and build our relationships on real knowledge and respect.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Romantic Love is a Hoax!
Does love necessarily arise from pre-existing needs?
Or can we liberate love from our prior wishes, expectations, and yearnings?
We will explore 7 powerful preconceived needs:
(1) security,
(2) approval,
(3) romance,
(4) sex,
(5) affection & intimacy,
(6) communication & companionship, and
(7) relationship structure.
An alternative form of love is based on
emergent, unexpected values we discover in new relationships.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Loving without Needing.
Jealousy arises in 'loving' relationships because of three factors:
comparison, competition, and the fear of being replaced.
If we become more autonomous and self-creating,
these three features of relationships become less significant
and hence the passion of jealousy becomes less likely.
However, within ordinary, possessive relationships, jealousy is normal:
If we find ourselves replaced, supplanted, traded-in for a better model,
we naturally feel a tremendous sense of loss, anger, grief, and betrayal.
This bitter feeling of hurt and hostility we call jealousy
can become one of the most powerful obsessions of human life.
And yet, this emotion is a social product---with deep cultural roots.
If we have learned how to feel jealous, can we unlearn this response?
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these magic blue words: Romantic Jealousy: Cause and Prevention.
Most loving relationships begin at the dependent end of the spectrum.
But we can grow toward relationships based in Authenticity.
This discussion will begin by scoring ourselves on 21 scales of growth
from the deficiency-dependent forms of loving
to relationships based on Authenticity.
As we become more whole within ourselves,
our former needs to depend on each other diminish
and we open the possibility of loving more Authentically.
Perhaps no loving relationship is completely based on Authenticity,
But if we stick to the need-and-deficiency basis for loving,
we will never begin to move toward the kinds of loving relationships
that are possible for people who are becoming more Authentic.
A one-page outline, including the 21 scales of growth,
will appear on your screen, if you click these magic blue words:
Growing in Love: 21 Ways to Become Less Dependent and More Authentic.
Our first personalities were formed by childhood socialization.
If we were girls, we were enculturated to be 'feminine'.
If we were boys, we were enculturated to be 'masculine'.
However, instead of just two possible gender-patterns,
there are actually thousands of possible gender-personalities.
There are both admirable and regrettable (as well as neutral)
personality traits within both 'masculinity' and 'femininity'.
The Gender-Pattern Chart will help each of us to make explicit
just what personality characteristics we now have
---and perhaps what traits we would like to change.
A one-page outline of this presentation and discussion will appear
if you click these magic blue words: What is Your Gender-Personality?
This presentation and discussion is organized around 27 questions,
subdivided into seven parts.
The major areas include: vows; children; income & expenses;
assets & debts; retirement & death.
After looking at the traditional answer to each question,
we will consider some possible alternative answers.
Every personal relationship has at least an implicit contract
concerning all 27 issues.
This presentation will help to make all provisions explicit.
Then we can discuss possible ways to improve
our current relationship contracts.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Instead of Marriage (or Instead of Divorce).
You will also be able to read all 27 questions
to be answered in a comprehensive relationship contract.
Our sexual responses often seem mysterious even to ourselves.
We may feel that our 'sex-drives' possess us
rather than we possessing them.
This presentation and discussion will outline a new hypothesis
which may be one step toward a comprehensive theory of human sexuality.
Older theories have tried to explain our sexual responses
either in terms of our biological heritage---animal sexuality---
or in terms of social learning---the way we develop most behaviors.
But the sex-script hypothesis presents a third possible explanation:
Our sexual responses may have been imprinted into us at an early age.
During certain critical periods in our psycho-sexual development,
particular images, stories, and sexual 'turn-ons'---our "sex-scripts"---
were imprinted in our brains more or less at random.
And these sexual fantasies remain with us for the rest of our lives.
For a one-page outline of this new explanation of human sexuality,
click these magic blue words: The Sex-Script Hypothesis.
Most of us have standard patterns of sex and gender,
but human persons come in infinite variety.
This discussion will explore six areas of variation:
(1) biological sex: female, male, or in between;
(2) sexual self-identification: girls, boys; women, men; & transsexuals;
(3) sex-roles: everyday behavior assigned on the basis of sex;
(4) gender-personalities: thousands of possible gender-patterns;
(5) sexual orientation: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual;
(6) transvestism: six different reasons for cross-dressing.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Variations of Sex & Gender.
Authenticity means creating our own comprehensive life-meanings,
our "Authentic projects-of-being".
When we re-center and re-integrate our lives
around our freely-chosen purposes,
we become more focused, unified, and decisive.
We gain greater autonomy and increase our capacity
to resist and transcend enculturation.
This approach to life was developed
by such existential philosophers and psychologists as:
Camus, Sartre, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, & Maslow.
But only we individually can decide what content
to put within this structure of Authentic Existence.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Becoming More Authentic.
Almost all of the religions of the world have strong moral standards.
Usually these patterns of behavior were said to be based on divine authority.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition,
the Ten Commandments are often thought to be the basic moral code.
But most people raised in these traditions cannot name all 10 Commandments.
And they would have a hard time showing
how their own morality derives from the 10 Commandments.
Rational ethics does not begin with a set of moral standards.
Rather all facts and opinions are brought to bear on each moral dilemma.
The participants in this discussion
will decide which specific moral issues they would like to discuss
under this distinction between rule-morality and rational ethics.
For a one-page outline of this event,
click these magic blue words: From Rule-Morality to Rational Ethics.
If we do not believe in any 'spirits' beyond ourselves,
can we still have a spiritual life?
We will explore six capacities of inwardness which are beyond
our physical, emotional-psychological, and intellectual dimensions of being:
(1) self-transcendence, self-criticism, & altruism;
(2) freedom, transcending our enculturation and choose for ourselves;
(3) creativity, our capacity to make something out of nothing;
(4) love, which enables us to encounter others as Thou;
(5) anxiety, disclosing our underlying Existential Predicament;
(6) glimpses of joy and fulfillment, living beyond angst and despair.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Spirituality for Humanists.
Do we feel lonely, depressed, meaningless, anxious, guilty, insecure?
For each of these psychological feelings (which we can easily understand),
we will uncover a hidden existential twin,
a much deeper problem that only seems to be psychological.
We may also notice our Malaise as absurdity, the existential Void,
splitting, despair, or ontological anxiety.
We will separate the psychological feeling
from our Existential Malaise in five ways:
(1) description, (2) cause, (3) duration, (4) scope, and (5) cure.
Once we have acknowledged our Existential Dilemma,
we can seek ways to be released from it.
For a one-page outline of this presentation,
click these magic blue words: Our Existential Predicament.
Loneliness of Spirit:
Have you felt an aching void in the center of your being?
Deeper than interpersonal loneliness
the loneliness of spirit is a hollow, haunting sound
sweeping thru our depths, chilling our bones, and causing us to shiver.
It often disguises itself as longing for a specific person
or pretends to be yearning for contact with anyone,
but this deeper lack or emptiness-of-being
is not really a kind of loneliness at all.
Being together with other people, even people we intensely love,
does not overcome this deep incompleteness of being.
This inner default of selfhood has never been solved by love,
no matter how good and close and warm that love might be.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Loneliness of Spirit.
Being Depressed in Spirit:
This exploration of our inner spaces
will contrast two forms of depression:
psychological or situational depression
and existential or spiritual depression.
Psychological depression is always linked with specific life-situations:
We get depressed when college is boring,
when we have family or financial problems,
when love lets us down, etc.
But the other kind of depression cannot be directly traced to a cause.
We are quietly haunted by a vague sense or dark mood.
Thru the hollow depths of our being sounds a low, moaning tone,
which breaks into consciousness when our daily preoccupations fall away.
Attempting to understand this deeper depression
will be the main thrust of this presentation and discussion.
For a one-page outline, click these blue words:
Are we perfectionists,
driven by a deep sense of guilt we cannot overcome
no matter how good we become or how much we are able to achieve?
Have we striven mightily against our sense of worthlessness
only to discover that we cannot satisfy our longing for meaning?
Do we sometimes feel more guilty than we ought to feel?
Does our guilt keep coming back attached to some new 'reason'?
If so, perhaps we need to probe deeper into the human experience of guilt.
Our task will be to isolate and describe "non-moral guilt"
(an expression that may seem self-contradictory at first),
to explore how it interacts with our everyday experience of conscience,
and to shine a light in the direction of freedom from this "existential guilt".
For a one-page outline on this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Existential Guilt.
Have you ever felt the nameless dread?
Terror and anguish without a cause?
This talk gives a name and careful description to the nameless threat,
the free-floating anxiety we have all felt but perhaps not faced.
First we will distinguish existential anxiety from simple fear in 5 ways.
Then---capitalizing on insights provided by
Martin Heidegger, Søren Kierkegaard, and Ludwig Binswanger---
we will proceed to unpack and examine many dimensions of this experience:
our ordinary ways of trying to manage anxiety;
the option of channeling it creatively as the impetus for Authenticity;
and finally the possibility of living without angst.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Existential Anxiety: Angst.
The 'fear of death' is a composite experience encompassing:
(1) the abstract, objective, external, empirical fact of biological death;
(2) our personal, subjective, emotional fear of ceasing-to-be
---which arises from our awareness of our own finitude; and
(3) our ownmost ontological anxiety
---our Existential Predicament disguised as the fear of ceasing-to-be.
This least understood and most repressed existential dimension of death
will be the central focus of this phenomenological investigation.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: An Existential Understanding of Death.
Existential spirituality began with such Christian thinkers as
Søren Kierkegaard, Rudolf Bultmann, and Paul Tillich. This form of
spirituality springs from an awareness of our Existential Predicament,
which we experience as existential depression, loneliness, anxiety,
absurdity, insecurity, splitting, meaninglessness, and despair.
Our spiritual development may be measured be the degree
that we acknowledge and embrace our Existential Dilemma.
And even the denial of our absurdity, emptiness, and meaninglessness
may manifest of a spiritual sensitivity we sometimes prefer to escape.
Existential spirituality begins by naming the nameless dread,
describing our Malaise, and our usual ways of coping with it,
and then seeking pathways to life on the other side of despair.
For a one-page outline of this presentation and discussion,
click these blue words: Introducing Existential Spirituality.
Will we 'live again' after we have died?
Most of us hope to transcend death in some form,
but what reasons would we offer to support this wish?
This discussion with explore immortality, resurrection,
and reincarnation--raising several scientific
and philosophical questions about these beliefs.
Participants will be invited to present and defend
their own forms of belief in life after death.
We can't come to grips with life
until we come to grips with death.
Confronting death may be the beginning of human spirituality.
A one-page outline of this presentation and discussion
will appear if you click these blue words:
Scientific and Philosophical Questions about Life After Death.
Both Nancy Cruzan and Karen Ann Quinlan were still in their 20s
when they fell into persistent vegetative states.
But because they had no 'living wills',
they were kept 'alive' for several years.
People of every age need Advance Directives.
A 'living will' or Advance Directive for Medical Care is
a legal document setting forth your own personal medical ethics,
stating clearly how you want to be treated at the end of your life.
Especially if you want something other than standard medical care,
you must put your wishes into writing.
We will discuss 24 questions for comprehensive Advance Directives.
Some of the themes: quality of life; pain control;
termination of treatment; right to die; definitions of death;
disposition of remains; philosophical-religious issues.
For a one-page outline of this presentation,
click these magic blue words: Your 'Living Will'.
Both at the beginning of life and at the end,
it is often necessary to make medical decisions.
Whether the patient is a person,
not yet a person, or now a former person
may determine who makes the decisions:
(1) the patient himself or herself;
(2) the parents for a newborn or a young child;
(3) the proxies for someone who may have become incapable
of making his or her own decisions.
Four marks of personhood will be suggested and explored:
(1) consciousness & self-consciousness;
(2) memory;
(3) language;
(4) autonomy.
click these blue words:
When Is a Person? Pre-Persons & Former Persons.
We may claim the right to die in any of three forms:
(1) withdrawing or withholding medical treatments and life-supports,
(2) voluntary death---chosen rationally by the candidate, or
(3) merciful death---chosen rationally by proxies for the candidate.
However, each of these life-ending decisions is open to abuse:
(1) premature withdrawal of life-supports,
(2) suicide and manipulated or coerced death, or
(3) mercy killing.
This talk will propose ten practical safeguards
to prevent abuse of the right to die
while permitting appropriate and reasonable decisions for death.
Basically the safeguards gather the considered opinions of the candidate,
the doctors, the family, and any ethical consultants who may be involved,
including members of the clergy.
Also there should be appropriate waiting periods, full reporting,
and the possibility of prosecution for those who violate the safeguards.
If you would like to see exactly what these proposed safeguards are,
click these blue words: Ten Safeguards for Life-Ending Decisions.
You will also find a more extensive explanation
of this presentation and discussion.
send an e-mail message to James Park:
PARKx032@GOLD.TC.UMN.EDU