I recently spoke about how I bought a copy of The Philosopher's Magazine, and while looking through it there was another book I found that interested me: The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten. Written by Julian Baggini, one of the founding editors of the magazine itself, the book includes 100 short (1-page) stories (dilemmas) that are realistic and approachable, followed by 1-2 pages of reflection that Julian includes to help get the thinking-juices flowing. I started reading it for fun, and then yesterday it entered a new level.

It was sitting on my desk at work (as part of my commuting-reading), and a colleague saw it and asked me to bring it to dinner with me (three of us had planned to have dinner and catch up on sharing our summer stories). We decided to read one of the stories at dinner as a conversation-starter, and randomly selected "Till death do us part." This story addressed the issue of a couple who were getting married and how they were afraid of fully committing to one another and allowing the other to be "first." In our conversation, issues of marriage, commitment, permanence, personal vs. hypothetical experience, relationship, honesty, self-disclosure, divorce, and using the terms you vs. I in discussions when we speak of our experience in our own voice or when we at times project our experience as something common to all people (thus, you vs. I). We discussed this story and in the process learned more about one another and even about ourselves. We smiled later in the evening while, at a comedy club, several comedians made references to issues around marriage, commitment, and all the rest. If only they knew about our conversation earlier.

The story gave us a shared framework for the rest of the evening's discussions. Interesting how such a short and simple story can lead to something that is larger and more expansive than a 1-pager. While our conversation was very philosophical in nature, we managed to consider this without referring to Plato, Kant, Hegel, or even Derrida. Ahh, how interesting applied philosophy can be, not so much to get clear answers, but rather to see how many questions there really are.

Technorati Tags: The Philosopher's Magazine, Julian Baggini, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten