It's now been a month....

I wanted to say something now that it has been a month or so since I joined EC.

What a ride!(*hug*)

I find it so incredible that this online forum, where distances don't matter and where all that is seen are symbols on a screen, could elicit so many emotions in me, so much action in my personal life, and so much real honest-to-goodness joy!

No longer are we passive consumers of information, we are singing our own songs again, like communities used to do before the advent of mass media.

This internet forum, here at EC, enables all of us to become "Socratic". There is a reason Socrates disliked writing down his ideas, (it took Plato to do that), the principal reason was that Socrates was nothing if not humble, and he considered his ideas to be little seedlings freshly spouted and that each of these seedlings needed the work of dialogue to flesh them out so that they could be honed and refined to withstand the test of time.

Mere writing was to Socrates like spreading the little seeds on barren ground.

We are still saddled with writing however, and writing, if poorly done can often be misinterpreted, or worse, interpreted negatively, with intentions misunderstood. I like the Socratic method, which is basically asking question after question of you, so that we can approach something resembling the truth, but more importantly something resembling excellence (another very important concept to the ancient Greeks) in speech and thought.

More to the point is that, like Socrates would say, I know nothing! Let us engage in dialogue with that attitude, so that we may in fact learn of the fragility of our opinions, and the wonderful way that a dialogue, or "dialectic" can lead to powerful insights.

For many it is all too much trusting to fate, or happenstance, but I disagree, we can get somewhere interesting if we keep our eye on excellence, always!

Just a random thought from a proud and gay late bloomer...:icon_bigg