The Way of Suffering, Week 2 - The Closed Home;Part 1 and 2

Last weeks discussion - Week 1

So, I realize that last week that we didn't decide where to read to. I think it's good to go through each of the chapters in their parts. This week we'll be focusing on the introduction, parts 1, and 2 of Chapter 1.

Again, these questions do not have to be answered, they are just sparks or guidelines to help begin conversation.

Introduction - I think the questions he asks are much better than any questions I could possibly come up with.

• Can we disparage a mundane life?

• Is there an underlying violence in the will of the ordinary?

• Isn't our imposition of a pattern on the world a prerequisite for creation?

Part 1, The Closed World of Work

• What is so unsettling about "having time on my hands?"

• Is it only our cultural conditioning that makes us feel the need to work past necessity?

• Do we use work to impose an even keel on life?

• Have we made the whole of our existence a work project?

• Have humans always dreamed of the utilitarian obsession of modernity?

Part 2 - The Promethean Dimension of the Ordinary

• Is the goal of work to stifle drama?

• Is the fascination with technique merely and outlet of our Promethean urge to greatness?

• Can we make revolutions routine?

• Is the practical person life marked by a will to impose boundaries on everything?

• Have we subordinated our whole life to control?

• If we do subordinate our life to control, have we just become a victim of our own obsession?

• Does the need to control everything explain the anti-religious sentiments that we see in modernity?

• Can we define "sacred" as an Otherness which has the power to overwhelm us?

• Does practicality seek to make us gods?

• Is the end goal of work to eliminate all everything which is Other than ourselves?

• Does our desire to control limit us to "the smallest of possible worlds?"

Next week we will finish the rest of the chapter, parts 3, 4, and 5.