Quote:
Originally Posted by Liara Covert  Can you offer examples where your own confusion has given way to a deeper understanding of things? |
My social studies teacher would give us a whole unit to do, on, say, the benefits of free trade. The theory of how it worked, the beauty of the "invisible hands" of supply and demand. We'd lap it all up like good students and he had us chant, "Free trade is good, the whole world should do it--" then he'd interrupt us with "WRONG!" and showed us the ugly side of free trade: slave labor, and how the prices set by supply and demand didn't consider future availability of resources (gasoline, for example... by pricing it so cheap in the past because there was so much of it, that resource became depleted so not only is it more expensive now but there's not gonna be much for long
and we're dependent on it,) and so on. Presenting two extreme points can be a less good way of journalism, but the confusion that causes does highlight the necessity of understanding all sides before one forms an opinion. Until then, I thought I had opinions -- I didn't, I was just parroting. I was safe and happy as a parrot, but wouldn't leave the excitement of confusion and resolution for anything. (We thought -- multilateral world powers. How's that to happen? Still mulling over it, more's the beauty.)
Most recently, I stumbled upon
this long-loading video and while it was pretty clear which "side" the documentary is on, the opposition was presented thoroughly in action and fairly in motive enough for me to... get confused, which was a good thing because confusion means I'm thinking. Even after the documentary concludes the unequivocal defeat of intelligent design-- they still keep in mind that laypeople equivocate. Presently I've reached the penultimate conclusion of Pantheism, but am working on some kinks (that would be easily solved by apathetic Pantheism, or just a material algorithm -- the latter at least leaves a lot of room for discovery and discussion.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Liara Covert How do you define that line of enlightenment? |
I believe it's... Hegelian? Only it need not always be a wishy-washy synthesis of ideas if that is his. I think it was Nietzsche who wrote that you can't understand someone's point of view and not agree with them-- understanding can only come to you if you were in someone else's place with that someone else's senses and experiences and wholly holding that other person's opinion as true as yours by
definition. That struck me as incredibly unfair at first, but it's true. And false.
As a Chaote I've learned that holding a paradigm doesn't have to be forever and it doesn't have to be a final encompassing irreversible choice -- but best developed to a point where you know where you (under)stand in one and all sides at once... and what I've understood from that is, a lot of perspectives that we think are in irreconcilable conflict with each other -- aren't. They don't even have to reconcile, oppositions can both stand true and the perceptions one selects can be not of your own-- and then becomes your own. Only, it doesn't seem to hold in a social context but it can sometimes only really work with a social dimension (See, right there I see no conflict and don't see why there should be except that other people might see a conflict there and that's a view I don't have even if I do and it's shared, so actually there is and there isn't. Makes perfect sense to me. We have a feedback loop of shared and differed viewpoints all true, for the given value of true.)