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How to have a Serious Conversation

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
Serious conversations can be tough. People rightfully feel strongly about a lot of things and they often find statements by those who feel differently difficult to stomach. Nobody likes their, sometimes life-long, assumptions and beliefs challenged because most of us just want to "get along to get along." And thus, because we don't want to face the emotional stress of facing such challenges we sometimes either ignore the persons speaking, or we try some other avenue of confrontation.

The problem is, of course, a serious discussion is, well, serious. If it weren't serious we would be far less bothered by the disagreement, wouldn't we? But serious discussion is the type of discussion we should, I think involve ourselves in for two reasons.

First, we involve ourselves in serious discussion because the questions usually raised have significant impact upon how we and those who we care about, live. Victor Frankl, in that famous discussion of life. "Man's Search for Meaning" argues that a man can endure just about anything so long as he has a reason for doing so. In many cases that reason may seem trivial to others and sometimes quite profound, but in all cases whatever it is, it is important to the person. It is what gives that person hope. Serious discussion leads us down into the depths of our beliefs and challenges us to find the reasons for our hope. The person who has not found good reasons for his hope has little reason to hope. You cannot fully hope in something if one part of your person, your mind, is not engaged.

Second, if one of our core beliefs is that we should care about others, then we owe it to them, out of that compassion, to challenge them on their core beliefs. Plato had Socrates say, "the un-examined life is not worth the living," but of course, that was a value judgement by, supposedly, Socrates. The question is: is an un-examined life less valuable than an un-examined one? Should we do, as the Christian scriptures say, "walk circumspect-fully?" Let's ask the question in another manner. What lives in the history of the world have impacted the world the most? Which ones have shaped society and helped others the most? I'm not going to suggest a list but only that you must consider the long-term impact. Comparing the impact of just two contemporaries of Greece a few hundred years before the advent of the Christian era will show the distinction. Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle wrote and taught many things and Alexander the Great conquered pretty much the known world in just a few short years. Then, they died. It's been over 2000 years and today which has had the greater impact, the military conquering of Persia, the Levant, Egypt and all the rest, or the ideas of Aristotle spread, in part, by that conquering? 2000 years later we still discuss the ideas of Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. We seldom discuss the ideas of Alexander the Great.
Richard Weaver's book, "Ideas Have Consequences" makes the argument that it is ideas that shape the world more than armies. A point with which I agree.

But how do we enter into a serious discussion of heart felt beliefs? How do we recognize and deal with the emotions stirred up by the challenges to our belief systems inherent in truly serious discussion?

One thing I've observed is that many cannot discuss a subject when they have been hurt by that subject and have not, as of yet, recovered from the pain. A person who has been wronged by a lawyer and has never been able to forgive that lawyers, tends to hate all lawyers and discussing the benefits of the legal system with him or her, is sometimes almost impossible. So the first thing a person needs to do in facing an unpleasant topic, is to examine if they are in an emotional state where they can handle the discussion. If not, might as well avoid the topic altogether.

As a corollary to the above observation though, there comes a point in the healing process where it is necessary to have an honest appraisal of the subject. That lawyer hating person, once they get to the point that they can admit they only hate a particular lawyer, may then be able to discuss the legal system, it's faults and merits, more calmly and rationally. Usually we have been hurt by a particular and in our pain begin to hate the general as if every specimen of the general is exactly like the particular by whom we have been hurt.

Once we have reached the point of psychologically restricting the pain to the actual pain giver rather than a class, we are ready to explore that subject. In doing so the first thing we need do is to recognize that, "I could be wrong." This is important. It's important because if you are so convinced of your position that you can't be persuaded you are wrong, then you are not entering into a serious discussion, you are entering into an opportunity to "defend the truth"... i.e. to "preach". You can tell a person in a discussion who is merely preaching by their unwillingness to give even the smallest ground to their interlocutors. Every point is hotly debated, they never say, "you have a good point there" and they never, ever, change their mind.

In addition they seldom have real arguments. As a substitute they quickly begin to question your motives. They will put the worst spin on what you say and claim that you are arguing for what you are not. This does not mean they are wrong, but in most cases my motives are irrelevant to the question at hand.

Let us suppose I were a US Senator. I own a large share of stocks in a cancer research company. There is, before the Senate, a bill to end cancer in five years. It's a massive amount of money but the general consensus of science is that it can be done if we spend the money. Everybody is for it. I am too. So I vote for it. Does that mean I voted for it to make a lot of money or because it was a good thing? Even if I did vote for it for the money, does that automatically mean the bill is a BAD thing? We seldom address the world from pure or singular motives and even if we did, it is seldom those motives actually impact logic or reasoning of the question before us.

This personal attack on the motives of the person is the first indication that the person making the attack has run out of arguments, and the earlier in the discussion this happens, the more likely it is that the person didn't have sufficient evidence for their position in the first place. In fact, it argues that their commitment to that position is personal and emotional rather than objective and rational. This is not to say they are wrong, but only that they don't have the intellectual reasons needed to persuade me or pretty much anybody else, that they are right. When faced with personal experience as the primary source of evidence, you do not persuade anyone who has either not had that experience or having had it, interprets it differently.

Two things really constitute the raw ingredients of a good discussion. First knowledge. Not just of your position, but of the other's a well. I believe it was John Dewey who said: "those who understand their side of an issue only, scarcely understand that." By knowing the opposite point of view even better than your own, perhaps, you insure that you are ready meet the challenges you face in the discussion, gain confidence you yourself and your position (which tends to make the discussion more interesting AND to keep you more calm and rational regarding the subject matter), or may even make you change your mind!

The second thing that constitutes a raw ingredient for good discussion is to not put yourself in a position where other are looking to you to "defend" the point of view you take. Plato called people who were in charge of "defending" the society the guardians. Once a person is a guardian of a position it adds a layer of social responsibility to them. To the weight of the seriousness of the discussion should not, if possible, be added the weight of preserving ones social status amidst those one is thought to represent. In other words, one seldom changes their mind outside of either private or anonymous discussion. When our friends are cheering us on we seldom join the opposition.

In terms of the actual discussion, if we have the knowledge, have distanced ourselves from whatever pain we have experienced related to the subject at hand, and aren't in a position where we are the "guardian of the truth" then we can be ready for a real serious discussion, a sometimes life changing one at that.


AJ
 

DeletedUser2870

Guest
Nice post.
The main problem nowadys is that its no longer possible to actually have a discussion about anything, because feelings have become more important than facts. And the 'right not to be offended'.
Whereas I used to enjoy debating, its now only done with people who are still open to it, and they tend to have more or less the same views on many subjects. The details may vary, but the broader views are the same, which makes debating rather useless.

Schools and universities now have 'safe spaces' where people go not to have to listen to ideas they dont agree with. How and why schools, but particularly universities agreed to create such spaces is beyond me, because knowledge and wisdom can only be gained by listening to different views. One does not have to be persuaded, but at least should be open to listening to the different views. No matter how distasteful some might be, it would be good to look at other points of view at times. As I often said, there is (almost) no act, no matter how despicable, that cannot be seen as a virtue in some kind of environment or situation, either a hypthetical one or a real one.
But by instituting those 'safe spaces' students no longer are confronted by other other views and whats worse, they even learn they need to be ignored, or even silenced. Either by overshouting people with different views, or by physical violence or threat of violence.
Many speakers have been censored, many people and media now self-sencor, just to avoid hurting someones feelings. But behind that reasoning is the real reason: fear. Not fear of hurting someone elses feelings, but fear of that other person not responding with words, but with violence. Yet giving in to that fear only makes the situation worse. Because it stifles thought, and stifles the freedom of thought.
 

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
Nice post.
The main problem nowadys is that its no longer possible to actually have a discussion about anything, because feelings have become more important than facts. And the 'right not to be offended'.

Whereas I used to enjoy debating, its now only done with people who are still open to it, and they tend to have more or less the same views on many subjects. The details may vary, but the broader views are the same, which makes debating rather useless.

The story of how we got to this place goes back several hundred years and begins with the Enlightenment. I'll not bore you too much by tracing all the steps, but suffice it to say that the basic mistake had to do with Descartes's method of determining what is true. In his works he argues that he will not believe anything unless he cannot logically find a way to not believe it. Radical skepticism was the result something which influenced, Hume, Voltaire, Spinoza and eventually Nietzsche, and others. The posits of radical skepticism are two: 1) only the individual is capable of knowing; and 2) reason is direct knowledge. On both points he was mistaken.

His failure in the first part was in his understanding of knowledge. Put simply, you cannot know what you know without stating it. In other words, I may have a sense experience but until I put that experience into a linguistic or symbolic form, I don't know what that experience is..i.e. it becomes known as what it is when I label it. To label it and thus make it knowledge I can only use the shared tools of language and thus, since they are shared, my knowing is mediated by the understanding of my social group. Descartes assumed the individual could know without reference to the group and didn't realize that knowledge, rightfully known, is always symbolic in form.

His second failure follows from and underscores the first...explaining why you cannot know what you know until you put it into language. Whatever sensory input, internal or external, you receive you receive amidst much more than you can consciously process. So you attend to some sensory input but not all. This means the vast majority of what you experience is lost to history. What remains, remains only because you label it. Memory is the labeling of sense experience stored, the sense experience itself unclassified until you label it.

If I haven't lost you yet, I'm pleased..LOL. The point is that knowledge, once you make it reside in the individual, means it is not shared. "What's true for you is true for you, and what's true for me is true for me" is the result. No amount of MY knowledge can change YOUR knowledge because there is no bridge. The bridge, before Descartes (and for a long time afterward, though it becomes weaker as time goes on), was the logic and grammar of language. When I pointed out a logical statement and showed you that your "knowledge" was wrong, you had to agree with me and change what you knew. By the 1930's though, in academia, the use of reason and evidence had become pretty much useless because one could easily just put forth some counter set of facts. In other words, by 1900 in Europe and 1930 in the US discussion in academia begins to fade to be replaced by groups of like minded individuals beginning to form alliances, usually political. Philosophy had reached the point where the mantra of philosophers was: "Nothing can be known with certainty," a mantra picked up by the less informed as, "Nothing can be known" and, in it's eventual form, "Truth is not an object." Now you can see how academia no longer follows the idea that an good, logically rigorous and evidence based discussion has any relevancy. In fact, some feminists consider such discussion a paternalist subterfuge designed to keep men in power to the exclusion of women. Against they posit a more "intuitive" type of knowledge that just "knows" right from wrong.

Finally, all this means is that instead of using traditional means of persuasion, it is the job of the persuader to make a person FEEL something is true rather than THINK it is true. Reason is suspect because logic and grammar are used to control people who have been disenfranchised -- at least that's the general tone and tenor of much of academia today. I place of traditional reasoning, beginning with the New Left of the mid 1960' persuasion became linked with identification and politicians resorted to constantly reminding their listeners "I'm one of you!" It is identification which underlies the rhetoric of today and if I come into your presence and say I'm not one of you, you have a right to be upset. You know the truth and it isn't me.

The outcome of all this is the replacement of truth with power as the goal of living. We don't speak of helping people find the truth but of empowering them. Empowerment and the lack of power are the focus of identity politics and identity rhetoric simply seeks to rally the troops with mantra's, angry fist waving, protests and the like. There is not need to persuade because the type of persuasion used in the past was just a tool of your enemies. So don't listen, don't use logic and reason, don't engage, just shout, wave your fist, and believe you know all you need to know.

That's how we got here. And this is the very short version. LOL.

AJ
 

DeletedUser2870

Guest
A very nice compilation.
True knowledge can only be gained by communicating, which only can be done in a meaningful way if confronted by different views.
Disallow that and you ll force the other side into a position where he will at some point have no discourse but use violence. Which is what we are seeing now. A chasm thats widening, because some people just refuse the other sides to speak.
It rather is like what happened in Nazi Germany, with the irony that its the people calling themselves ‘anti-fascists’ using the same fascist techniques the claim to be against.
 
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