General Knowledgespeaking topic
Why does Rumi's 'Masnavi' still speak to people from so many different cultures? Let's talk about Sufism's universal language of love.
— Rumi, the Masnavi
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- In some cultures the past lies 'in front of us' and the future 'behind us,' because we can see the past but not the future. We, on the other hand, say we are 'moving forward' into the future. If two communities imagine the same time in exactly opposite directions, does time have a real direction at all?
- Some languages use one word for both 'blue' and 'green'; in Japanese, the 'green' of a traffic light is still called 'ao' (blue), so the lights are made to lean bluish. Language can bend even the color our eyes see. Do words describe reality, or shape it?
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- How did the arrival of perspective in painting, from the Renaissance onward, change the way we see? Let's talk about the illusion of depth as an 'invention.'