One-hour discussions about the commons: those assets and responsibilities that everyone shares. This event is virtual.
Contact Tom Potter at 719-846-6841 for more information.
The topic this month, inspired by the upcoming Thanksgiving celebration, is Kinship, and how it relates to the commons. Thanksgiving is traditionally a celebration with family and close friends, but it’s also a tradition with some families to invite strangers who happen to be alone on that day. This reflects some very basic behavior of humans, and many other species, to form small groups to make survival possible in a hostile world. As humans have learned other ways of creating safe places for individuals, we still tend to return to the same ingrained group behaviors from the past. Back when day-to-day survival was on the line, accepting strangers into the group was probably much more uncommon than today, when the worst outcome may be having to put up with a bore for the afternoon. When the issues of survival are now on a much larger scale, does the instinctual need to form kinships help or hinder the solutions to those broader issues?