Hi, I'm Rasmus.

I started the Stockholm Symposium because I'm more interested in doing philosophy than studying it. By trade I'm an engineer; by disposition I'm a generalist who never quite fit in one box. I build software, I sketch from life, I play almost anything by ear, and about five years ago I started writing poetry, which arrives more easily than any of the rest. I've spent a lot of my life paying close attention to people: why we so rarely do what's good for us, why we struggle to say the true thing, and why a good question, asked honestly, can move a whole room.

For years I wrote these observations down, mostly for myself: little essays on free will, on death, on what we owe each other, on whether a life can have everything and still feel empty. At some point it seemed obvious that the thinking gets better when it's done out loud, with other people, who disagree with you well. That's what this is.

What this evening is, and isn't

It isn't a lecture and it isn't a reading group. Nobody has to have read anything. We vote on the question each week, so the room steers itself toward what it actually wants to think about. Then we sit with that one question, reason it through together, quote the dead philosophers when they earn their place, and write down what we concluded before we leave. And yes: there's beer. Good thinking and a relaxed table are not enemies; usually they're friends.

The point is not to leave knowing what Kant said. It's to leave having actually thought, in good company, about something that matters, and to find your own footing on it.

The kind of thing I think about

Any of these can become a Thursday's question. The list is long on purpose; you'll have a vote, and so will everyone else.

If any of that sounds like an evening you'd enjoy, whether you live here or you're just passing through Stockholm, come and disagree with me. There's a place for you at the table.