The First One: 16 March 2014

So the first Sunday Lunch event happened last Sunday.

There was a last minute guest-related panic when a guest dropped out due to sickness, but I offered the place at short notice on twitter and found an incredibly interesting and thoughtful guest. It's got me thinking that maybe there should always be one place reserved for a last minute addition...

Anyway, the questions we discussed were:

1. How do people find deeper connection or fulfillment in their lives - something that isn't transitory?
2. Education - is there a more natural form? A different way of doing things, that is scalable and practical?
3. What makes us radically different from someone else? Are our internal fears/hopes/needs fundamentally the same?

(The fourth question, about criminality, we didn't discuss because the guest who had suggested it didn't turn up.)

For the past week I've been working with a transcriber to produce  a written text of the conversation. I hadn't really thought through how big and unwieldy the recording would be, so a transcript seems the easiest way to make the conversations easily accessible, though from time to time I'll post snippets of recording too I think. There's something about the cadence of the voices that really informs the understanding of the discussion. It'd be a shame to lose that.

I've divided the transcript up by question and will post each question separately over the next few days. The transcriber removed all the ums and ahs, but apart from that and the simple division into question topics I haven't edited the conversation at all.

It feels right that the participants remain anonymous so that future guests know that they can be honest in their views. I think there are some questions there about anonymity and levels of publicness that I'll need to unpick as the project progresses, but for the moment, that's the deal.

So, here you go: The First One...