As the coronavirus rearranges all our means of interacting, we have just been forced to end our OLLI course devoted to the project halfway through. After three sessions, the eighteen of us were just getting accustomed to the odd philosophical vocabulary that Martin Buber uses to distinguish the world of “I-You speaking” from the world of “I-It speaking,” and had begun using it to describe the different qualities of interaction which appear in our lives together. The two “basic words,” we began to understand, create different substances of togetherness for us to live into.
We are at present looking for a way to meet with each other, either virtually or (preferably) in person, to experience more fully what it is to live into each of the “basic words,” so as to gain some facility in noticing the difference. For we had just begun to establish the almost insurmountable dominance of the I-It mode in our ways of being-together.
In the meantime, please engage with me here by asking questions or providing examples from your lives. Let’s see if we can develop a Meetings community which could contribute to the healing of rifts between us.
