Plague Journal, Dissonance
The Socrates Café group met last night. As with the protocol for the last few sessions, a Go-To-Meeting video link was used. There were six images of participants, in a double line across the screen. For many reasons a digital representation of a human being lacks the vibrancy of physical presence. We are at at a loss as to when we will again be able to enjoy “in person” meetings.
The topic was about how we tend to categorize, pigeonhole human beings with whom we are not acquainted. These classifications are filled with assumptions, abstractions which at best are partially true, at worse are 100% untrue. Sometimes a type of person may be tagged with emotional baggage.
Our dialogue segued into a scenario involving close friends, perhaps family members who are aligned with a political party, ideological orientation, or a political leader that is 180 degrees opposite from oneself. What then? Does one compartmentalize the conversation, have a gentleman’s agreement to avoid all conversation about how power is to be administered, what type of society is desirable…. in order to remain friends? Sometimes that seems to work. The cost of this approach is that we never discuss what is closest to our hearts and minds. We also lose the opportunity to discover why the other thinks and feels the way they do, and the reasons for my commitments as well.
It is possible that I have no reasons of my own that I am able to articulate. I’ve simply listened to sources, and authority figures sufficient to absorb, and to be shaped by the rhetoric. Belonging to an intellectually satisfying group feels right even when the precepts are untethered from common experience. Who doesn’t enjoy belonging to a cognoscenti?
Language, common terms, words become problematic in the context of a discussion with someone who belongs to a way-of-thinking with objectives that do not overlap one’s own. Words are spoken, laden with alien meanings, especially the connotative, penumbra of emotional sensation that envelops the literal meaning of a word.
I was given a campaign flyer distributed by a Republican candidate for the Illinois State Senate recently. The slogan at the top of the flyer was stark, simple, and loaded with emotional content.
Freedom – Faith – Family
What adult would not subscribe to those ideas? Such is the slight-of-hand, the shell game of these three terms used as slogan by the candidate for Senate. A Republican Party candidate would believe that freedom means the freedom to do whatever one desires, and can afford to do, without bounds (regulation) imposed by government. A Republican Party member would believe that the authorized Faith is Christian, church focused, Evangelical in theological detail. So much the worse if you are inclined toward Islam, and particularly if atheism happens to be your position. A Republican candidate for office would understand family to mean heterosexual, male-female within the legal bounds of marriage. Other forms of “family” are unsupported.
Language, a construction rising out of our way of life, becomes problematic, a vexing impediment to communication when persons inhabiting differing worlds encounter one another. Language has nothing to do with the way the world is. Language has everything to do with the way we are.
There is no world-arrangement, apart from the mind’s effort to form categories, classifications, words.
Is there a solution?
Certainly none that are easy.
This quotation from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations offers an approach.
I can imagine a man who had grown up in quite special circumstances and been taught that the earth came into being 50 years ago, and therefore believed this. We might instruct him: the earth has long…etc. –We should be trying to give him our picture of the world. This would happen through a kind of persuasion
(Wittgenstein 1969: 34e)
Wittgenstein wrote that a paradigm of “reality” and a corresponding form-of-life is fundamental, unavoidable for all humans. Such models/ways-of-seeing are neither true or false empirically. Therefore logical argument, and the presentation of “facts” are of no avail if we desire a fellow human to see the world as we do.
Persuasion is the approach that promises success. So, settle in for a session of story telling. Stories with humor or irony are useful.
4 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Dissonance”
Jerry,
Very nice, thought provoking post.
You stated in your blog that
“The cost of this approach is that we never discuss what is closest to our hearts and minds. “
However, I believe that the closest thing to our heart in the example of family members IS family. We choose to compartmentalize and deprioritize the political and other aspects simply because their discussion would work against the primary value – the family relationship.
This does not mean that we adopt their ideology or world view during our interaction with them. Nor does it mean that we believe our position any less valid.
The issue can be further complicated by the behavior of the other person (let’s call him S) in social media. S will often post very negative and demeaning, and even threatening, opinions about those who share Barb and my beliefs and values.
I assume (due to a lack of evidence to the contrary) that the level of hostility and vitriol in his posts is enabled by social and personal distance and lowered level of accountability that the intermediation of the computer and internet provide. I assume (again, due to a lack of evidence to the contrary) that S would not feel comfortable or would not even admit to himself, let alone us, to applying those feeling to us should we be face to face.
The real question is: what would I do if I received evidence that contradicted my assumptions? At that point, given the stakes involved, it is incumbent on me to first critically examine my own beliefs and assumptions to ensure that they are based on rational evidence or logical extrapolations of that evidence.
If, I can honestly, without self delusion and bias, assert this to be the case, then I must decide whether to engage S in the areas of intellectual conflict and make a good faith, non confrontational effort to convince him of of the irrationality of his positions. If I make such an attempt and am unsuccessful or, if such engagement is not feasible in the first place, I must make the painful decision to not engage with him at all – even within the bounds of family interaction. I would do this with the knowledge that such a decision would probably be seen by him as an indication of the strength and righteousness of his views and make any eventual change less likely.
Very well stated.
“Family” is the prime value that made the run-up to the Civil War in the 1860s so heart rending. The “disagreement” about slavery was forced by external circumstances into a murderous conflict that in some cases did pit brother against brother.
Your exploration of the nuances of preserving the family bond is salutary, and I am in whole-hearted agreement. Circumstances are a wild card and no one is able to predict the future. My aspiration is that our differences will be ameliorated, and the existential and logical gap in viewpoint can be reduced so that we can again work together.
Also, reading your response, I was reminded that social media, has become in it’s current form, as unregulated as is our imagining of the old wild west. In the absence of a “Marshal,” laws, and a judge — the violent. abusive, verbiage rolls on, unabated. This is corrosive to everyone’s well being, and yet because of the cortisol high, many of us cannot get enough. This is the contagion that arrived first, prior to covid-19.
My sense is, as is the case in many, many interactions, that Joe and Barb are basing their potential fantasy discussion with “S” as one that includes rational decision making. Although I think that Joe has taken this into account to a degree, it is worth reiterating that “S” is coming from an emotional perspective, not one that is rational, although the argument coming from “S” will appear to be grounded in facts at least from his perspective. But there will be zero introspection, zero nuance, and zero empathy from “S” because he cannot afford it. The arguments are all based on a house of cards. Remove one card and the entire structure crumbles as does the rigid facade that hides the underlying reasoning for the stance – FEAR. Fear of change, fear of the stranger, fear of loss of power (even though that didn’t really exist to begin with), fear of aging, fear of chaos, and ultimately, fear of death. How does one instill logic based dialogue into that scenario? I’m not certain that it is possible.
Good thoughts…..
Logic!? Such a problematic term. We humans are logical intermittently, and most often when our stake is low.
Your observations come down to the insight that what qualifies as “fact” in the world which “S” finds much intellectual fulfillment, would not qualify as fact in the world which Joe inhabits. Worlds collide.
The strategy adopted by Joe is reasonable as far as it goes to preserve a baseline of family good will.