Pardon my carelessness for posting after only reading 25% of this, but I'm tired and my brain is full tonight; I will finish reading tomorrow. I don't like to read your posts unless I can devote the proper attention.
Still, I wanted to run something by you, because I think we think a bit similarly. I have trained my brain to enjoy learning [or being wrong] as much as I enjoy dispensing knowledge to others [or being right, at least temporarily]. In the same way a light bulb enjoys being lit in either polarity. Most neurotypicals are polarized like LEDs, and only enjoy the dispensing-knowledge polarity--which of course reinforces social status, affirms bonds with allies, and staves off anxiety. Thus they miss out on both the agony of moral ambiguity, and the joy of discovering surprising connections; but more importantly, they "miss leg day" at the gym. Critical thinking is not an innate measure of intellect genetically determined. It is a mental habit that must be trained like the body. To begin cultivating this habit, I recommend a small book by Alan Watts called The Wisdom of Insecurity, which [like many short books that get right to the point] had an outsize impact on my own development.
As an example of how I've become accustomed to thinking differently, I sometimes ask people if they've noticed the uncanny similarities between Trump and FDR, just to see how they respond. It's something that occurred to me only a year or two ago, because I'm not a political tribalist. But I never get positive engagement from this query, which is interesting. By which I mean not necessarily agreement, but even a willingness to debate. And I don't even intend to make this comparison as a defense of Trump; if anything, more of an indictment of FDR. But both men were as polarizing as bleu cheese, in their own way. It's hard for most folks to discuss either president without a primarily emotional framing, rather than a mere assessment of their achievements and shortcomings. People react as if I offended them, or as if they can't believe I'm allowed to walk the streets without a legal guardian. It's a very odd reaction for a question that in my mind is an anthropological curiosity.
For instance, if most Americans visited Rwanda, we would be hard pressed to discern meaningful differences between Hutu and Tutsi; but it's not too surprising that to them it's deadly serious. After all, the nature of primordial resource conflicts between neighboring tribes suggests that we carry innate predilections to invent minuscule differences between in-group and out-group members of our own species, so that we can alleviate the cognitive dissonance of wanting to dispossess them of their land or resources merely because we can no longer coexist for more mundane logistical reasons. So on some level we can reach back to that old tribal filing system to understand that it need not be rational outside the tribe. And yet few among us can step out of our own milieu, even hypothetically, to ask ourselves where we are equally arbitrary. And more importantly, if such distinctions are serving a useful purpose, or are merely old habits we haven't reconsidered in light of contemporary constraints.
Another thing I've noticed is how normal people really don't like ambiguity about ANY important topic, as much as they hate being wrong. Just like people tend to hate push-ups if they're not in the habit of doing push-ups. Unfortunately, being a robust critical thinker necessitates a massive and ever-growing mental folder marked "INDETERMINATE"...because that's life, I'm afraid. If we are honest with ourselves, it is never an easy task to differentiate open-mindedness from moral relativism. But without being able to consider such ambiguities, we may miss out on key insights, such as the possibility that political alignment may need to shift with the tenor of the times. Each political "tribe" answers certain questions [or social-cohesion challenges] better than others; but no tribe has all answers for all times. If it did, the others would atrophy and disappear. It is also an uncomfortable thing to consider that once sufficient contempt enters a relationship, it may be beyond repair. Or the method of repair may come at an unthinkable cost. But students of history are not unfamiliar with the fact that all civilizations encounter such tribulations in cyclic fashion.
OK, I'll give my jaws a pause now; looking forward to finishing your article tomorrow...
Pardon my carelessness for posting after only reading 25% of this, but I'm tired and my brain is full tonight; I will finish reading tomorrow. I don't like to read your posts unless I can devote the proper attention.
Still, I wanted to run something by you, because I think we think a bit similarly. I have trained my brain to enjoy learning [or being wrong] as much as I enjoy dispensing knowledge to others [or being right, at least temporarily]. In the same way a light bulb enjoys being lit in either polarity. Most neurotypicals are polarized like LEDs, and only enjoy the dispensing-knowledge polarity--which of course reinforces social status, affirms bonds with allies, and staves off anxiety. Thus they miss out on both the agony of moral ambiguity, and the joy of discovering surprising connections; but more importantly, they "miss leg day" at the gym. Critical thinking is not an innate measure of intellect genetically determined. It is a mental habit that must be trained like the body. To begin cultivating this habit, I recommend a small book by Alan Watts called The Wisdom of Insecurity, which [like many short books that get right to the point] had an outsize impact on my own development.
As an example of how I've become accustomed to thinking differently, I sometimes ask people if they've noticed the uncanny similarities between Trump and FDR, just to see how they respond. It's something that occurred to me only a year or two ago, because I'm not a political tribalist. But I never get positive engagement from this query, which is interesting. By which I mean not necessarily agreement, but even a willingness to debate. And I don't even intend to make this comparison as a defense of Trump; if anything, more of an indictment of FDR. But both men were as polarizing as bleu cheese, in their own way. It's hard for most folks to discuss either president without a primarily emotional framing, rather than a mere assessment of their achievements and shortcomings. People react as if I offended them, or as if they can't believe I'm allowed to walk the streets without a legal guardian. It's a very odd reaction for a question that in my mind is an anthropological curiosity.
For instance, if most Americans visited Rwanda, we would be hard pressed to discern meaningful differences between Hutu and Tutsi; but it's not too surprising that to them it's deadly serious. After all, the nature of primordial resource conflicts between neighboring tribes suggests that we carry innate predilections to invent minuscule differences between in-group and out-group members of our own species, so that we can alleviate the cognitive dissonance of wanting to dispossess them of their land or resources merely because we can no longer coexist for more mundane logistical reasons. So on some level we can reach back to that old tribal filing system to understand that it need not be rational outside the tribe. And yet few among us can step out of our own milieu, even hypothetically, to ask ourselves where we are equally arbitrary. And more importantly, if such distinctions are serving a useful purpose, or are merely old habits we haven't reconsidered in light of contemporary constraints.
Another thing I've noticed is how normal people really don't like ambiguity about ANY important topic, as much as they hate being wrong. Just like people tend to hate push-ups if they're not in the habit of doing push-ups. Unfortunately, being a robust critical thinker necessitates a massive and ever-growing mental folder marked "INDETERMINATE"...because that's life, I'm afraid. If we are honest with ourselves, it is never an easy task to differentiate open-mindedness from moral relativism. But without being able to consider such ambiguities, we may miss out on key insights, such as the possibility that political alignment may need to shift with the tenor of the times. Each political "tribe" answers certain questions [or social-cohesion challenges] better than others; but no tribe has all answers for all times. If it did, the others would atrophy and disappear. It is also an uncomfortable thing to consider that once sufficient contempt enters a relationship, it may be beyond repair. Or the method of repair may come at an unthinkable cost. But students of history are not unfamiliar with the fact that all civilizations encounter such tribulations in cyclic fashion.
OK, I'll give my jaws a pause now; looking forward to finishing your article tomorrow...