OLLI@DU / 2023 FALL / COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

Countering Hate, Fear, and Greed: What Can We Do to Promote a Better Future?

PRPC 1001

Monday

Dates: 9/18 to 11/6 (8 weeks)

Time: 1–3 PM

Facilitator: Terry Ortlieb, Diamond Facilitator

Location: Online

Class Limit: Unlimited

Sponsoring Site: South

This course will focus on techniques that we can use to build and deploy ideas for social media, meetings, discussion groups, etc. We can then use these ideas to reframe and recapture the narrative around the major topics of the 21st century. We can become part of the conversation without invoking venom. This course is also based on the premise that we don’t need to embrace or adopt meta values (like the cardinal virtues) to overcome our “failings”; we just need to stop promoting and advantaging false narratives. Starting with these premises, we will investigate how to promote the necessary changes to usher in systems and institutions that welcome what we have learned. Since the topics require forethought, this will be our approach:

• discuss the topic that was introduced the previous week

• following the break, the next week’s topic will be introduced

Focus will be on these current and future issues:

• Relationship between woke, multiculturalism, nationalism, globalism

• Ramifications of long-life spans, unemployment and purpose

• Taking advantage of the AI revolution

• Accommodating speed of change without physical violence

• Taking advantage of harmony when governing in a complex world

• How to combat disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, and dis-interpretation

Living a Life of Meaning

PRPC 1002

Tuesday

Dates: 9/19 to 10/24 (6 weeks)

Time: 1–3 PM

Facilitator: Thomas Shugrue

Location: Online

Class Limit: 15 Participants

Sponsoring Site: Regis

This course includes reflections on living a meaningful life and discovering sources of purpose and identity. Topics will include significance of activities, looking at our primary sources of identity, living a balanced life, re-discovering our talents, listening to voices of influence, and telling the story of our life. Our process will include reflection on our journey, visiting and anticipating the different seasons of our lives, and looking forward with hope and expectation as to our future activity and engagement with others. The course will be a celebration of who we are and who we can become in living a life of fullness and meaning in our future.

The Perils and Pearls of Aging

PRPC 1010

Wednesday

Dates: 10/18 to 11/8 (4 weeks)

Time: 9:30–11:30 AM

Facilitator: Donna VanDusen

Location: Online

Class Limit: 30 Participants

Sponsoring Site: Regis

With age comes the opportunity for extended personal growth. Participants will explore the social, cultural, physical, and psychological challenges of aging as well as practices for enhancing creativity and well-being in later life. Topics include identity, life transitions, ageism, wisdom, and the aging brain.

Political Philosophy: An Advanced Introduction

PRPC 1004

Tuesday

Dates: 9/19 to 11/7 (8 weeks)

Time: 1–3 PM

Facilitator: Mitchell Stewart

Location: Ruffatto Hall

Class Limit: 20 Participants

Sponsoring Site: Central

Political philosophy is the study of how people organize their collective or political life. It is a particular study of ethics, of the nature of justice and injustice, of fairness and unfairness. More critically, it is the study of the tensions between the individual qua individual and the individual in society.

Our formal aim is to explore a selection of the debates and arguments with which political philosophers have grappled. Our intellectual objective is to “make the familiar unfamiliar”, to unsettle our thinking, to provoke us to question what we think we know. Conversely, we will not, cannot, answer the philosophical questions that have vexed thinkers across time and space. Rather, we will frame and explore these questions, and be vexed in turn.

Please note: This is a graduate seminar in philosophy, but without the exams, papers, or grades. Both reading and active engagement are critical.

Sex and Intimacy in Romantic Relationships

PRPC 1009

Tuesday Dates: 10/3 to 10/31 (5 weeks)

Time: 9:30–11:30 AM

Facilitator: Paul Paiva

Location: Online

Class Limit: 30 Participants

Sponsoring Site: West

Are you satisfied or ecstatic regarding your intimate life? Do you think your intimate styles are mis-matched? Whether you are married, single, in a committed relationship, dating casually, or even celibate, this fastpaced course will give you new insights as to what is possible to create deep intimacy. Curriculum is based on psychology, the Enneagram, the Erotic Blueprints™, and evolved principles of Christian theology and Judeo-Christian scripture. You may or may not be Christian, yet we live in a culture which is imbued by Christian values, be they shaming or nurturing of sex. This affects all of us in this country, whether theist or atheist, spiritual or religious, agnostic or humanist. Attention will be given to normalizing these Christian values for a modern, integrated approach to sex and intimacy. It will be shown that pursuit of the sometime-elusive orgasm is not being selfish; rather, orgasm and intimacy can be tools for becoming a more evolved human being.