Piece of Mind Club

What I'm looking for is a way to continue the feeling you have when you're in school where you feel like your brain is on the edge of exploding with the far reaches of thought. Where you feel challenged and mentally stimulated and hopefully you don't feel too haughty or overly important, but just expanded. My first thoughts were book clubs and discussion groups. Something where you get folks together and have to really hash out ideas in a group format. But we all know that does end up either being potluck food fests or gossip parties. What I really want is a place where there is some rigour.

The best thing I can think of right now is some sort of collaborative art project or writing project. Obviously I am putting this in terms of aesthetics, cause that is what school was for me, but you can do something similar for whatever it was that made you feel most awesome a school.

Basic elements:

-Multiple people.
-Something to produce (this way you'll have to actually come to conclusions or at this a margin of agreement within the group).
-A schedule for production & numerous meeting times prior to getting there.

Given these things there will be an interaction that is driven towards some goal, but hopefully not too driven. All I really want out of this is the sort of group dynamic of idea population and the subsequent working through. I guess what is really missing here is something that guarantee that the thinking will be vast enough to hurt you in the head. I mean, I'm not going to have a problem with that, cause that's where I live...with a pain in my head at trying to understand everything at once and get it right. But like, maybe the thing you are trying to produce should be something that you probably can't really produce. Like focus your energy seriously on producing a television show. That way, you probably won't be able to, but you'll be able to take all of the steps to solidifying your ideas within the group. Or maybe you won't, but you will try and you will have to do a lot of head butting to get there.

So this wasn't the best explanation I've ever come up with. Maybe you could just have a book club. But make it a book that people can get passionately attached to. And meet too long and too often about it. And don't give up talking about. Don't just say you liked it. Try to worm your way through it until you're wearing the book like a suit of decaying flesh in some sort of zombie movie. In fact, just read Pale Fire. I didn't like it, but it would be ideal for this sort of project.