I ponder a lot about community and how important local community is for the functioning of society; many are the riches brought from afar by long distance communication. Nonetheless, local rationality meetups can increase local metis by generating intelligent community. I read in Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin how he (Franklin) employed his Junto to advance scientific knowledge, civil society, and business; there are some great examples there. But the Wikipedia page will do well enough for an overview.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junto_(club)

What I have done here is taken the Junto discussion questions of Franklin's club and reformulated them to serve as a model for the types of questions we can be asking each other to keep advancing community and local knowledge.

  1. Have you read anything useful or insightful recently? Particularly in technology, history, literature, science, or other fields of knowledge?
  2. What problems have you been thinking about recently?
  3. Has there been any worthwhile or important local news?
  4. Have any businesses failed lately, and do you know anything about the cause?
  5. Have any businesses recently risen in success, how so?
  6. Do you know of anyone, who has recently done something interesting, praiseworthy or worthy of imitation? Or who has made a mistake we should be warned against and avoid?
  7. Have you been doing anything recently to increase your psychological and physical health?
  8. Is there any person whose acquaintance you want, and which someone in the group can procure for you?
  9. Do you think of anything at present by which the group could easily do something useful?
  10. Do you know of any deserving younger person, for whom it lies in the power of the group to encourage and help advance in his career?
  11. Do you see anything amiss in the present customs or proceedings of the group, which might be amended?
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1 comment, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 8:14 AM

Thanks for this list! I'm thinking about ways I might knit these into casual conversation.