fandomhigh | Practical Philosophy, Thursday

The weather was okay. Overcast, but it wasn't raining, so as per his tradition, Ender had asked all the students to gather on the dorm lawn. There were pillows, blankets, bottles of water and sandwiches.

He greeted the arriving students with a, "Sit down in a circle, please. If we're going to talk, we should ensure we're all facing each other equally."

He shoved the sandwiches to the center of the circle, so everyone could access it.

"Welcome," he said. "My name is Andrew Skywalker. I'm an alumnus of this school; I graduated several years ago." That was all they needed to know, as far as he was concerned. "And you might be wondering what you signed on for. I'll give you the spiel I give my students every year I'm here - but this is the only class that is prepared or rehearsed to any capacity. That, after all, is the point of it."

"While 'philosophy' is in my class's title, we're not here to talk about the philosophers of old or the specifics of particular lines of thought in philosophy. In this class, we try to put our own experiences into a greater perspective through conversation and debate. Above all, philosophy is about asking questions about everything in the world around us - and about everything we feel about it. That means I expect some level of participation from all of you."

He smiled wryly. "That doesn't mean you always need to speak up about yourself," he said. "No topics are everything to everyone. If that week's subject veers too close to something you want to keep private, be my guest - just try and pitch in when someone else speaks. Ask questions."

"You can even ask questions of me, if you feel the need. And maybe together we can get to the core of our joint and individual experiences. Or maybe not. Maybe this is just going to be the hour this term where you get to sit around and gab." His mouth quirked a bit more. "That doesn't mean we're always going to be lingering on the existential questions - or staring at our belly buttons. It just means we're going to try and dig and come to some understanding about each other, ourselves, and the world."

He picked up a bottle of water. "So let's talk," he said. "How do you feel about where you are now? You've been on this island for close to a week; is it speaking to you, in a metaphorical sense? What kind of experience has it been for you? As for the rest of you, how has the past year treated you? Has there been anything that made you cry or made you think or made you wonder?"

"We can talk about that. Or you can bring up something else you feel is worth questioning. I consider most topics fair game, as long as they're brought up with regard for your fellow students. I can't claim knowledge on most, but I can claim an ability to annoy you with questions about just about anything."

He grabbed a sandwich from the bag. "Every week, we'll reflect on something that happened since we last met, but I'm always open to speaking about anything that comes to mind." He nodded at one of the students. "I've talked for long enough. It's your turn."

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"Like, oh my gosh, some parts of being here are really, really great?????????????? Coming here, meeting so many different kinds of people, having the luck to be friends with so many of them and getting to, like, see their homes, is just amazing???????????????"

Nina was pointedly not paying attention to Norman, who at least sounded like he'd learned something from his sheer idiocy, but her smile faded a little anyway, as she looked at the rest of the class.

"But, like, I think the island is a bit... cruel, too, because if you mess up here, you can usually fix it and... and in a lot of homes and worlds and places, you can't. So it, like, encourages people to be careless because consequences don't matter here, the way they do elsewhere and that's kind of a terrible lesson for anyone to learn??????????"

"I have a feeling you and one of your classmates have spoken before. If not, you probably should," Ender said, a wry smile on his face. "Though, thinking back to your classmate's words, it does make me wonder: what consequences are we talking about? Just harm to life and limb? Because in many worlds, that's not really a primary concern."

Edited 2019-05-09 14:24 (UTC)

"We've talked. It's probably better that we don't talk more," Nina said evenly, since it really was better, for Norman, that they didn't. "He's, like, scared of me or something anyway?????????????"

Nina never really had thought highly of Norman in the first place and the events of the last week had only made that worse.

"Not just, like, life and limb though those are important and in a lot of worlds they are a concern," Nina said, toying with a piece of grass that had made it onto her blanket somehow.

"It's also, like, consequences to knowing that home isn't safe. It should be. That's what homes are for. It's getting people who had nothing to do with whatever was going on killed. People, like, don't come back from that in a lot of worlds. It's about all the struggling to deal with what happened, even if it got fixed, afterwards and about lying through your teeth about being okay, when you're not. Not every consequence is big but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter," she finished vehemently.

"And you feel those consequences also don't matter here?" Ender asked.

"I feel like, like they do matter here but that everyone acts like they don't matter here, because here's supposed to be everything's fine after all, like, it got fixed, so why worry about?"

And, oh, but that upset Nina badly.

"Have you let them know?" Ender said. "That their actions weren't as consequence-free as they might think?"

He sounded genuinely curious.

"Of course I have," Nina said, keeping it simple and not mentioning the jerk moping about in class about it or Prompto and his murder-apology-kitten. "But, like, when everyone else is all 'it's totally fine' it's easy to just ignore me or think I'm being mean."

Ender looked at her, considering. "Not everyone is receptive to being taken to account," he said. "How did you approach them?"

Yeah, Nina wasn't socially suicidal enough to say that openly in class.

"One of them approached me," she settled on. "And the other... I could probably have approached better."

Naturally, Sidon was inclined to listen to all of his classmates share their various experiences, but the more Nina spoke, the more he had to admit that he grew particularly pensive. He had, of course, intended to speak with her a little after they'd gotten the kitten all set up later today, but this was....certainly giving him some food for thought.

And if she should notice his attention, he would offered her a soft and gentle smile, and an encouraging nod, his eagerness to get everything taken care of now growing. They really did need to talk, didn't they? He just hoped that, somehow, he might be able to ease her troubles, even if just a little bit, by doing so...

Of course she noticed, and not just because it was, really, impossible to not notice Sidon.

Nina didn't really know what to do with that soft smile tossed her way, though, so she just looked down and away, picking at the grass.

Practical Philosophy, Thursday

Re: Talk.

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Re: Talk.