Epistemological

This should be filed under metaphysics or perhaps epistemology (how we know what we think we know). Which is a "whole 'nother topic" unto itself that deserves closer examination which can be a pain in the ass because that would be self-examination, something rare and much more difficult than absorbing the prejudices of those around us and letting it pass for truth. There's truth in numbers, you know...or was that strength? In any case, the much sought after feeliing of being amongst vast number of the like-minded is so consoling that we grow ornery when that good feeling is threatened in any way. It is easier to blame another than to revise one's thinking or to assimilate new ideas into one's world view.


Given that the great debate healthcare has reduced many to hysterically screeching hyenas and has resulted in a lot of verbal feces hurling it might also be good to take a look at how to argue intelligently, a primer of sorts.

This is a basic breakdown of the ways in which disagreement can be expressed and the relative merits of each from low to high. I submit that the lower levels mark the speaker more than the subject of the speech but like venting, hurling verbal feces feels good and if one gets in the last word...well, doesn't everyone know that makes you right? Ok, just kidding about that last one.

Anyway the levels are:

1. Name calling
2. Ad Hominem
3. Responding to Tone
4. Contradiction
5. Counterargument
6. Refutation
7. Refuting the Central Point

The idea is that the lower forms are cruder and the higher ones are more compelling and effective.

This topic on how to disagree leads to questions of "What is true?" since we all believe what we believe is true. Oh sure, we sometimes admit an element of faith, belief, or that something is right for us and "to each their own", but such attitudes seem more and more rare today.

Too bad it eludes us most of the time.


From British Playwright Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize Lecture:

In 1958 I wrote the following:

'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

It goes on and on and is quite a read. In any event I was impressed...

People arrive at conclusions of the same relative degree of veracity in a variety of ways. Some latch on to some idea or another in a desperate emotional leap, others reason within themselves, others try to seek confirmation or some demonstrable affirmation of sensibility from others or from various sources outside themselves while still others recognize that for some things there is an inability to really "know" in some perfect, divine, absolute or god-like way and (sensibly in my opinion) call it faith. This doesn't mean that people arriving at what they would insist on calling truth do it similarly. In the end it is just one person saying something is true.

I am increasingly impressed by the tribal nature of truth. At times we hardly seem more civilized than the fearful villagers with pitchforks and other implements of destruction, trying to get the courage to march up to that twisted Dr. Frankenstein's castle on a stormy night. Then when we get our courage up by reinforcing one another we are like a hasty, wild west posse so certain and equally wrong that innocent strangers riding in off the prairie would be luckier if they rode on to the next town.

There is a smug satisfaction derived from the feeling of being in a community of the like-minded. It has nothing to do with making smart decisions. It has more to do with feeling that one fits in. There have been times and places where the conventional wisdom was just wrong...or at least in retrospect, years later it was widely recognized to have been so. But as we live it in realtime, almost in slow motion, rarely do we see any ugliness in ourselves or think that our actions might be species or culture-limiting.

John Cleese, captures our essential obliviousness quite well. His vid likens us to junkies or addicts to projection, self-righteousness, deflection and a host of other techniques we use to distance ourselves from any recognition of responsibility for our actions or actions made in our name which we somehow find a way to endorse. While we need a sense of local and "fitting in" we serve the darker sides of our nature by creating our own mythical evil-doers and boogeymen in the form of ethnic, nationalistic, demographic and ideological pettiness because it makes us feel better about ourselves.