You can consider two completely oppositional philosophies, for example vegetarianism vs carnivorous diets. The roots of those philosophies answer the question, what is the most beneficial way for humans to fuel their caloric need? Their answers are very different, and an argument between these two philosophies may become very volatile because of the implications of their claims.
The vegetarian may make an extreme claim like, “the carnivore doesn’t care for animal rights.” The carnivore may dismiss this claim, saying of course they love animals, they own pets and hunt and love going to the zoo. But the two sides of the argument, and their tokens of support to back up their claims, may lead very different definitions of “animal rights”. The carnivore would not consider the conditions that slaughter animals go through as the animal right violation that the vegetarian does. And unless the vegetarian can show some very convincing photos and impactful statistics, the two philosophers will never agree on this subject, and if the conversation between the two ended here, nothing would be solved. This is only because the two sides started with the most oppositional tokens and quickly escalated a conversation. The two people may, deep down, have talking points that the each person can whole-heartedly agree on. “A balanced diet is important,” “current food prices make it difficult to fulfill the diet you strive for,” or “skittles are delicious (skittles are vegan, many people don’t know the ingredients of a lot of processed foods, many could or could not be vegan, and the consumer would never know)”.
If agreements like this are laid out at the start of an argument, the two parties may have a better understanding of one another and some values that they share. Then, when they get to a section where they are unable to agree on a topic, they can refer to what they’ve said prior in the conversation to understand how the other side came to this conclusion. If the two people were to start the argument on a disagreement, it’s possible that someone may make generalizations about the person they are arguing with, simply according to the label they choose to describe themselves as, such as vegetarian. This will lead to less constructive conversation, and more name calling-esque rhetoric we see a lot of nowadays.
When we can truly understand how people who believe certain philosophies arrive at their root arguments, we can understand why those arguers may become very emotional when defending their philosophies. When debating against Christians about their views on abortion, you are defending denying millions of people from the chance to enter heaven and meet their Lord God. To some, non-religious, non-Christians, or atheists, who don’t believe what they’re saying may not show sympathy for their arguments. But you should, empathy is one of the most important traits for having a constructive argument so you can truly understand how a person feels about their philosophy, and maybe your own.
I am trying to imagine ways to lay out this general situation that arises when two points of view come together to talk. In your opening sentence you mention philosophies that are in complete opposition to each other. Definitely, this is the sense that one can get while watching such debates.
However, in trying to "open space" on the situation, trying to introduce some looseness, some flexibility, somewhere in the debate to add information, I find myself noticing the fundamental reality that human beings are extremely similar to each other when we compare them to other species in the natural world.
Mathematically, our needs and desires are highly symmetrical to each other. In other words, as we examine the differences and the similarities in our thinking, we should be able to find examples at either extreme. Your phrase "complete opposition" covers the very different aspect, but what about the other extreme, the extreme where we are very similar?
I am basically saying that the extremely similar part does exist, and am suggesting that we share mutual (ancestral) branches within our hierarchy of needs, or of values, as it were. We DO share values, somewhere, I am confident. And that this agreement occurs in the general case, as we look higher into the parent nodes of our value hierarchy.
The main problem, as I see it, occurs where we have reclassified ourselves so that we see our neighbor as prey, with "neighbor" coming from a universal human social value, and "prey" coming from a role within an evolving natural economy that creates relationships among the species. We are deciding whether racial superiority, as an organizing concept, will split off just one of our national identities to rule over the others, assuming that only one nation can be superior to the others.
We are in a moment when the world is watching a national supremacist movement commit a genocide, and another national supremacist movement (US exceptionalism) fund it.
From an economic point of view I think it turns out to be "whatever works". If the US/Israel juggernaut works, then I think we will be in for more of the same.
Always the optimist, I don't think national supremacy movements will work in today's world, at least not for long, not stably. The genocide by Israel in Palestine is still being pursued. The Greater Israel project is ongoing. The projection of "buffer zones" onto other peoples' property is simply encroachment. This is the adopted strategy, and it has worked since 1948.
But I think it is about to fail, utterly. My guess is that the apartheid state has already been condemned in the mind of the global public, and that it cannot persist indefinitely.
I'm not sure about the roots of the carnivorous diet but I can say that the philosophical roots of vegetarianism and veganism are many and varied. If I were to discuss the merits, I would hope to introduce the notion that there may be long term and spiritual consequences of these diets that can't be represented by any single material temporal dimension like caloric intake. And which, in evaluating their utility, ought, to my mind, be considered. Further, we may not have the concepts as well as the tools to measure the essential difference between them or any philosophies for that matter. And there is the matter of language. Can language dependably represent the truth? All truth? Whose language? What part of a language? Wiki language? Britannica language? Secret languages? Silent languages? Language is a left brain activity. What about visual art or music? Athleticism? Dance? Do we have to say what is true can only be represented by language?
I accept all of what you are saying. The framework I am suggesting assumes a finite context around the nature of conversation and controversy. It should either arrive to an agreement, or stop at the true state of disagreement. Everything here is designed to live within the realm of conversation.
Can you make more generalizations about language and conflict? As an example of what I'm driving at take the current conflict in the Middle East. I see this as a game with at least seven participants. Most of these parties are not forthcoming about their motives or their actions. How is conversation useful in this case where self interest seems to be the dominant theme? What is the framework that might be successful in resolving this conflict?
Like a tangled bunch of string, as I look at it, the first thing is to try to open more space onto the situation. With the string, I tease apart the centers of the knots. With the situation in the Middle East, I look at the nature of the "conflict". Start wherever the sense of what is wrong is greatest. Take the parts of a dead kid hanging off the side of the collapsed apartment building. This is clearly wrong, so I start there, and see how much space I can pull into that knot before it begins to bind somewhere else: What is the essential conflict between the kid and the engineer at the bomb factory? This represents a wide analytical distance between the parts, but the parts are definitely related. This is the space we are looking for in order to untangle the situation. String all of implications together from end to end. Why did the pilot drop the bomb? Why was the pilot a pilot? Who put these systems together?
Let's focus on Netanyahu for a moment, not as an ultimate causal factor, but as a reference point. What was Netanyahu's conflict with the kid? Who put Netanyahu where he is? Whomever it was, what was their conflict with the kid?
I think that we will discover that this "conflict" is not about a misunderstanding, but it is about taking. It is colonialism: move in, take over. Bury the dead, and put a a hotel parking lot over their graves. This is the actual fact.
In my view there is no conflict to resolve between the kid and the bomb maker. The main conflict to resolve here is between those who watch it happen, and their own conscience. The resolution of that conflict is the one that will matter.
Genocide is not a conflict between the perpetrator and the victim, it is a conflict between life and death. It is the conflict between predator and prey. It is a conflict between civilization and the beast.
Yes! Brilliant. How does one resolve the conflict with one's own conscience? Is the perpetrator beyond being influenced? It seems that way. If the beast is runaway self interest and I reject violence as a solution, what can be done?
I feel like I have seen people in support of Israel be asked, essentially, “how could you support a state that treats children like this,” and their answer rings something like “all Palestinians who pose a threat may be subjected to Israel’s defense.”
While I certainly do not agree with their defense, that fact may be an unalienable truth to that person. “All threats to Israel’s existence may be eliminated,” is harsh but to some, that is their belief. So what are you supposed to do next in a conversation. Find another different truth that you can agree on? Debate them and try to change their mind? Or is it even worth continuing with someone you may never make progress with?
Exactamente! I believe it is not our job to convert anyone. Our growth, everyone's growth , is a matter for our own selves. As is often said: between us and our Creator. It seems that everyone in the Middle East is threatened by everyone else in the Middle East so Israel doesn't have a patent on that one. If they could see this and if they could recognize that they do not have a legitimate claim, historical or religious except by force of arms, to the by now Unholy Land, maybe a truce could be arranged. But that is a huge pill to swallow for someone already choked up with their own importance. Once they were the chosen of God but they abandoned that position a long, long time ago.
Scales fell from a lot of eyes with Machiavelli's "The Prince". In a similar fashion scales have fallen from my own eyes with the genocide. I notice that it is easy not to care. It surprised me, a relative babe in the woods to the ways of humanity.
I thought I knew a lot because I had read a long book about Leningrad during the siege when I was a young man. The Vietnam war was right there for one to notice how people related to it.
I have watched this genocide very closely since October 7th, 2023, but have been watching Gaza since the 1970s, through the bombings, massacres, lawn mowing, sniping, the siege.
I was in Nicaragua over a period of 4 years during the Contra war and so my ideas of what of my parents were up against, as people of conscience, got fleshed out with some of observations of my own.
I do not know how many people estimate how tragic their own deaths, or the deaths of their loved ones would be, compared to the tragedy of the deaths that I have been watching from afar, but I calculate either as equal in tragedy to the other.
The bombs fall from the sky and they kill innocent people. We swim in the same waters with the sharks, I mean with the munitions manufacturers, the vampires. If they did not drink blood, they would be more interested in the science of getting along with ones neighbors.
That is what I grew up thinking that a Christian would do, or anyone who thought like a Christian. Considering that Christians and Jews think alike about a lot of things, it would thinking what a Jew would do, too. And now I know more about Islam, I realize that a Muslim would do, too. One would think. Especially if one were innocent.
The adult world puts scales over the eyes of their children when they are young. They encourage the youth to see the best in people.
But there is more than the just the best out there.
The question, in my mind, has to do with the mega organism that we create when we form our modern economic society. If the head of that society is corrupt, will the tissue of the society be willing to step to the fore?
This thing is rotting from the head. We are in the tissues. The elephants are fighting and the grass is being trampled.
From here, this corresponds to a "must respond" situation, post Nuremberg.
The genocide has not been stopped. It continues. We continue to pay for it. We need to say "Stop!" and make it stick. Stop everything until we figure that one out, would be my recommendation. If this is going to be normal, I don't want to go forward. I want to back up and correct something.
This has been on my mind, too. I see the ground zero question as: Can it be saved? As a fundamentally lazy man, I hope it can. (Democracy is a sort of a hope machine; isn't it? Maybe the next election cycle will straighten it all out.) Since I have yet to see any reason that will happen, I suppose I will have to, sometime soon, get up off my comfortable seat, pack a few books, some pots and pans and cast my bread upon the waters, my fate to the wind, take a leap of faith. Since I was a young man, I have been hoping (there's that word again) to find a community where there is no war. Maybe there is one out there. Maybe many. I'm just not seeing it from here. Will a change of POV help? Tell me it can be saved then tell me how.
Yes, I think the basic decency of the society can be recovered. It becomes a bit abstract, but I see it as a matter of a sort of Poynting vector, the direction of the flow of energy between the layers of society. Similarly to how anarchists will say "punch up", I think that small-d democrats need to express their political power in an upward direction. The tendency to confuse "leadership" with "representation" is part of the problem. Small-d democrats generally need representation more than they need leadership, as the democratic spirit rises up. Rather than the DNC telling us how to behave, it should be the other way around.
People do not need to reach the upper levels of power to have an effect: all they need to reach is the power level that is directly above them. The precinct must express its voice to the district, the district to the state, and the state to the national. That would be a democratic, representative, form of governance. But for the DNC to direct the show from the top down is authoritarian, not democratic, and then the "Democratic Party" is fraudulently named.
I think we can "push upward", insist upon our democratic right to do so, and be effective.
"People do not need to reach the upper levels of power to have an effect"
I like this. It rings true. Do we need "solidarity" to have this effect? Who are "we"? To what do we belong? I think we belong to the universe, that we are not alone but are at the start of an eternal adventure of discovery and love. Pretty hard to put that into the political narrative or almost any narrative for that matter.
Yes. Hard to avoid the temporal drama. I'm in the same place, sort of. Trying to play, in the best way I can, the part I have cast myself in. Sometimes, though, I feel this is a mis-take. That it is not leading to the denouement I've been hoping for. I wonder if I can rewrite the script. Create a new character which, of course, would have to grow out of the old one as there are no plot erasers and the curtain has been up for a while now. Perhaps this is as it must be. The Director has given us the freedom to mess around; trusting our creative abilities; knowing the eventual outcomes will be pleasant to behold.
https://chatbotics.org/Conversations-With-The-Machine/A-Negotiating-Methodology.html
You can consider two completely oppositional philosophies, for example vegetarianism vs carnivorous diets. The roots of those philosophies answer the question, what is the most beneficial way for humans to fuel their caloric need? Their answers are very different, and an argument between these two philosophies may become very volatile because of the implications of their claims.
The vegetarian may make an extreme claim like, “the carnivore doesn’t care for animal rights.” The carnivore may dismiss this claim, saying of course they love animals, they own pets and hunt and love going to the zoo. But the two sides of the argument, and their tokens of support to back up their claims, may lead very different definitions of “animal rights”. The carnivore would not consider the conditions that slaughter animals go through as the animal right violation that the vegetarian does. And unless the vegetarian can show some very convincing photos and impactful statistics, the two philosophers will never agree on this subject, and if the conversation between the two ended here, nothing would be solved. This is only because the two sides started with the most oppositional tokens and quickly escalated a conversation. The two people may, deep down, have talking points that the each person can whole-heartedly agree on. “A balanced diet is important,” “current food prices make it difficult to fulfill the diet you strive for,” or “skittles are delicious (skittles are vegan, many people don’t know the ingredients of a lot of processed foods, many could or could not be vegan, and the consumer would never know)”.
If agreements like this are laid out at the start of an argument, the two parties may have a better understanding of one another and some values that they share. Then, when they get to a section where they are unable to agree on a topic, they can refer to what they’ve said prior in the conversation to understand how the other side came to this conclusion. If the two people were to start the argument on a disagreement, it’s possible that someone may make generalizations about the person they are arguing with, simply according to the label they choose to describe themselves as, such as vegetarian. This will lead to less constructive conversation, and more name calling-esque rhetoric we see a lot of nowadays.
When we can truly understand how people who believe certain philosophies arrive at their root arguments, we can understand why those arguers may become very emotional when defending their philosophies. When debating against Christians about their views on abortion, you are defending denying millions of people from the chance to enter heaven and meet their Lord God. To some, non-religious, non-Christians, or atheists, who don’t believe what they’re saying may not show sympathy for their arguments. But you should, empathy is one of the most important traits for having a constructive argument so you can truly understand how a person feels about their philosophy, and maybe your own.
I am trying to imagine ways to lay out this general situation that arises when two points of view come together to talk. In your opening sentence you mention philosophies that are in complete opposition to each other. Definitely, this is the sense that one can get while watching such debates.
However, in trying to "open space" on the situation, trying to introduce some looseness, some flexibility, somewhere in the debate to add information, I find myself noticing the fundamental reality that human beings are extremely similar to each other when we compare them to other species in the natural world.
Mathematically, our needs and desires are highly symmetrical to each other. In other words, as we examine the differences and the similarities in our thinking, we should be able to find examples at either extreme. Your phrase "complete opposition" covers the very different aspect, but what about the other extreme, the extreme where we are very similar?
I am basically saying that the extremely similar part does exist, and am suggesting that we share mutual (ancestral) branches within our hierarchy of needs, or of values, as it were. We DO share values, somewhere, I am confident. And that this agreement occurs in the general case, as we look higher into the parent nodes of our value hierarchy.
The main problem, as I see it, occurs where we have reclassified ourselves so that we see our neighbor as prey, with "neighbor" coming from a universal human social value, and "prey" coming from a role within an evolving natural economy that creates relationships among the species. We are deciding whether racial superiority, as an organizing concept, will split off just one of our national identities to rule over the others, assuming that only one nation can be superior to the others.
We are in a moment when the world is watching a national supremacist movement commit a genocide, and another national supremacist movement (US exceptionalism) fund it.
From an economic point of view I think it turns out to be "whatever works". If the US/Israel juggernaut works, then I think we will be in for more of the same.
Always the optimist, I don't think national supremacy movements will work in today's world, at least not for long, not stably. The genocide by Israel in Palestine is still being pursued. The Greater Israel project is ongoing. The projection of "buffer zones" onto other peoples' property is simply encroachment. This is the adopted strategy, and it has worked since 1948.
But I think it is about to fail, utterly. My guess is that the apartheid state has already been condemned in the mind of the global public, and that it cannot persist indefinitely.
I'm not sure about the roots of the carnivorous diet but I can say that the philosophical roots of vegetarianism and veganism are many and varied. If I were to discuss the merits, I would hope to introduce the notion that there may be long term and spiritual consequences of these diets that can't be represented by any single material temporal dimension like caloric intake. And which, in evaluating their utility, ought, to my mind, be considered. Further, we may not have the concepts as well as the tools to measure the essential difference between them or any philosophies for that matter. And there is the matter of language. Can language dependably represent the truth? All truth? Whose language? What part of a language? Wiki language? Britannica language? Secret languages? Silent languages? Language is a left brain activity. What about visual art or music? Athleticism? Dance? Do we have to say what is true can only be represented by language?
I accept all of what you are saying. The framework I am suggesting assumes a finite context around the nature of conversation and controversy. It should either arrive to an agreement, or stop at the true state of disagreement. Everything here is designed to live within the realm of conversation.
The true state of disagreement. Elegant concept and I bet useful.
Can you make more generalizations about language and conflict? As an example of what I'm driving at take the current conflict in the Middle East. I see this as a game with at least seven participants. Most of these parties are not forthcoming about their motives or their actions. How is conversation useful in this case where self interest seems to be the dominant theme? What is the framework that might be successful in resolving this conflict?
Like a tangled bunch of string, as I look at it, the first thing is to try to open more space onto the situation. With the string, I tease apart the centers of the knots. With the situation in the Middle East, I look at the nature of the "conflict". Start wherever the sense of what is wrong is greatest. Take the parts of a dead kid hanging off the side of the collapsed apartment building. This is clearly wrong, so I start there, and see how much space I can pull into that knot before it begins to bind somewhere else: What is the essential conflict between the kid and the engineer at the bomb factory? This represents a wide analytical distance between the parts, but the parts are definitely related. This is the space we are looking for in order to untangle the situation. String all of implications together from end to end. Why did the pilot drop the bomb? Why was the pilot a pilot? Who put these systems together?
Let's focus on Netanyahu for a moment, not as an ultimate causal factor, but as a reference point. What was Netanyahu's conflict with the kid? Who put Netanyahu where he is? Whomever it was, what was their conflict with the kid?
I think that we will discover that this "conflict" is not about a misunderstanding, but it is about taking. It is colonialism: move in, take over. Bury the dead, and put a a hotel parking lot over their graves. This is the actual fact.
In my view there is no conflict to resolve between the kid and the bomb maker. The main conflict to resolve here is between those who watch it happen, and their own conscience. The resolution of that conflict is the one that will matter.
Genocide is not a conflict between the perpetrator and the victim, it is a conflict between life and death. It is the conflict between predator and prey. It is a conflict between civilization and the beast.
Yes! Brilliant. How does one resolve the conflict with one's own conscience? Is the perpetrator beyond being influenced? It seems that way. If the beast is runaway self interest and I reject violence as a solution, what can be done?
I feel like I have seen people in support of Israel be asked, essentially, “how could you support a state that treats children like this,” and their answer rings something like “all Palestinians who pose a threat may be subjected to Israel’s defense.”
While I certainly do not agree with their defense, that fact may be an unalienable truth to that person. “All threats to Israel’s existence may be eliminated,” is harsh but to some, that is their belief. So what are you supposed to do next in a conversation. Find another different truth that you can agree on? Debate them and try to change their mind? Or is it even worth continuing with someone you may never make progress with?
Exactamente! I believe it is not our job to convert anyone. Our growth, everyone's growth , is a matter for our own selves. As is often said: between us and our Creator. It seems that everyone in the Middle East is threatened by everyone else in the Middle East so Israel doesn't have a patent on that one. If they could see this and if they could recognize that they do not have a legitimate claim, historical or religious except by force of arms, to the by now Unholy Land, maybe a truce could be arranged. But that is a huge pill to swallow for someone already choked up with their own importance. Once they were the chosen of God but they abandoned that position a long, long time ago.
Scales fell from a lot of eyes with Machiavelli's "The Prince". In a similar fashion scales have fallen from my own eyes with the genocide. I notice that it is easy not to care. It surprised me, a relative babe in the woods to the ways of humanity.
I thought I knew a lot because I had read a long book about Leningrad during the siege when I was a young man. The Vietnam war was right there for one to notice how people related to it.
I have watched this genocide very closely since October 7th, 2023, but have been watching Gaza since the 1970s, through the bombings, massacres, lawn mowing, sniping, the siege.
I was in Nicaragua over a period of 4 years during the Contra war and so my ideas of what of my parents were up against, as people of conscience, got fleshed out with some of observations of my own.
I do not know how many people estimate how tragic their own deaths, or the deaths of their loved ones would be, compared to the tragedy of the deaths that I have been watching from afar, but I calculate either as equal in tragedy to the other.
The bombs fall from the sky and they kill innocent people. We swim in the same waters with the sharks, I mean with the munitions manufacturers, the vampires. If they did not drink blood, they would be more interested in the science of getting along with ones neighbors.
That is what I grew up thinking that a Christian would do, or anyone who thought like a Christian. Considering that Christians and Jews think alike about a lot of things, it would thinking what a Jew would do, too. And now I know more about Islam, I realize that a Muslim would do, too. One would think. Especially if one were innocent.
The adult world puts scales over the eyes of their children when they are young. They encourage the youth to see the best in people.
But there is more than the just the best out there.
The question, in my mind, has to do with the mega organism that we create when we form our modern economic society. If the head of that society is corrupt, will the tissue of the society be willing to step to the fore?
This thing is rotting from the head. We are in the tissues. The elephants are fighting and the grass is being trampled.
From here, this corresponds to a "must respond" situation, post Nuremberg.
The genocide has not been stopped. It continues. We continue to pay for it. We need to say "Stop!" and make it stick. Stop everything until we figure that one out, would be my recommendation. If this is going to be normal, I don't want to go forward. I want to back up and correct something.
This has been on my mind, too. I see the ground zero question as: Can it be saved? As a fundamentally lazy man, I hope it can. (Democracy is a sort of a hope machine; isn't it? Maybe the next election cycle will straighten it all out.) Since I have yet to see any reason that will happen, I suppose I will have to, sometime soon, get up off my comfortable seat, pack a few books, some pots and pans and cast my bread upon the waters, my fate to the wind, take a leap of faith. Since I was a young man, I have been hoping (there's that word again) to find a community where there is no war. Maybe there is one out there. Maybe many. I'm just not seeing it from here. Will a change of POV help? Tell me it can be saved then tell me how.
Yes, I think the basic decency of the society can be recovered. It becomes a bit abstract, but I see it as a matter of a sort of Poynting vector, the direction of the flow of energy between the layers of society. Similarly to how anarchists will say "punch up", I think that small-d democrats need to express their political power in an upward direction. The tendency to confuse "leadership" with "representation" is part of the problem. Small-d democrats generally need representation more than they need leadership, as the democratic spirit rises up. Rather than the DNC telling us how to behave, it should be the other way around.
People do not need to reach the upper levels of power to have an effect: all they need to reach is the power level that is directly above them. The precinct must express its voice to the district, the district to the state, and the state to the national. That would be a democratic, representative, form of governance. But for the DNC to direct the show from the top down is authoritarian, not democratic, and then the "Democratic Party" is fraudulently named.
I think we can "push upward", insist upon our democratic right to do so, and be effective.
"People do not need to reach the upper levels of power to have an effect"
I like this. It rings true. Do we need "solidarity" to have this effect? Who are "we"? To what do we belong? I think we belong to the universe, that we are not alone but are at the start of an eternal adventure of discovery and love. Pretty hard to put that into the political narrative or almost any narrative for that matter.
Yes. Hard to avoid the temporal drama. I'm in the same place, sort of. Trying to play, in the best way I can, the part I have cast myself in. Sometimes, though, I feel this is a mis-take. That it is not leading to the denouement I've been hoping for. I wonder if I can rewrite the script. Create a new character which, of course, would have to grow out of the old one as there are no plot erasers and the curtain has been up for a while now. Perhaps this is as it must be. The Director has given us the freedom to mess around; trusting our creative abilities; knowing the eventual outcomes will be pleasant to behold.