Crossroads, threshold, whatever

There are enough alarmists running around: the end of the world, the end of history, the end of capitalism, the end of who-knows-what. I'm not one of them. On the other hand, we are faced with a number of serious issues which, much like the nuclear destruction of the world in the 1950s/Cold War, which could mean the end of all of us, if we don't wise up. There is no self-destructive, nefarious cabal hiding somewhere waiting to end everything as we know it. As Pogo said so long ago, "We have met the enemy, and he is us" (1953). As my mother never tired of saying, we're all our own worst enemies.

There is little doubt in my mind that if we continue (as a society and a world) along our current path, our day are numbered. We're polluting faster than we can find remedies. We're using up resources faster than we can recycle and find substitutes. We're polarizing each other faster than we can make friends. We're oppressing faster than we're freeing. In short, we are doing our damnedest to bring on the end nobody really wants.

It's not a big deal. I mean, why should I get all upset about any of this? If we destroy our basis for living, none of us will be around to be the wiser. OK, a whole lot of people will no doubt suffer and slowly die anquishing and painful deaths, but what the hell, wasn't it worth it. That second X-Box, that 17th Beamer, that €40,000 bottle of wine ... it all was worth it, right up to the end. And since there will be nobody left, there will be no one to give a rat's behind what we had or didn't have before we checked out of life. When we are gone, no one will be left to care one way or the other.

Still, I am one of those helplessly romantic people who think the earth is an overwhelmingly beautiful place. It is full of magic and wonder and beauty. It can put up with abuse than none of us can; it provides for all who are there, untill they take more than they deserve; it is, unquestionably, the greatest mystery that we can imagine. But, what the hell .. there's money to be made. Right.

Personally, I'm not all that excited or depressed about being or not being here when it all goes down the tubes. Chances are very, very good that I'll be gone before it happens. In a couple of decades, I'll barely be a memory in anyone's mind. Still, I have grandchildren, as do my siblings. By default, I have children who are going to outlive me. I may not care about what happens to me -- after all, I had my chance -- but I do care about what happens to them. That's just the kind of person I am. If I merely sit back and watch those who think they know do whatever the hell they please till there's nothing left for anybody, well, then I'm just as guilty as they are. I have no desire to die guilty ... not because I'm afraid I won't get into heaven, but because it simply isn't necessary that I do. I still have a voice (though faint), I still have the opportunity (though diminishing), and I still have the means (though restricted) to possibly instill a moment of doubt about the wisdom of the world as it is in any number of others.

No, it is not for me that I speak. It is for others who so far have no voice, no opportunity, and no means. The difference between me and many folks, but especially between me and the capitalists, is that others, "the other" (in philosophical terms) is more important to me than myself.

I'm not alone, I know. But I also know that I am an anathema to the current rational way of thinking. We are at a crossroads, or a threshold, or whatever. We all have to decide what we want to do. The upside is there are many options available. The downside is that TPTB want to think we don't have them.

You're choice. Your move.

The real problem with "arguments"

We like to think that we live in a rational world, even if there is craziness going on around us all the time. We assume that rational is normal and that craziness is not. Unfortunately, like so many other things, this is merely an assumption.

Though held in high esteem, rationality is little understood by those who advocate it most strongly. In the rational world, if this is right, then that must be wrong; if this is good, that must be bad; if it isn't one, then, by default, it must be the other. This is -- and you'll excuse my directness -- simply insane.

The rational mind, the mind that we exalt these days, is a mind of either-or: there are always only two options -- Republicans or Democrats, freedom or slavery, good or bad, right or wrong, capitalists or communists (or socialists, or whatever else they decide is "the other"). The rational world, it would seem, is reduced a mere black and white. It is this, or it is that. The trouble is, our experience tells us that it is anything but ... the world is not either-or.

Rationality, like so many other well-liked notions, is simply an unquestioned assumption. Who decided when and where that there were only ever to be two options. While I may agree that there are two sides to every question, who decided that we're asking the right question to begin with? This reduction to simplicity is a dangerous path to be following. It assumes that there are only two options. There aren't. There are as many options as we decide to allow.

I have long advocated that we start thinking about "reasonable" and abandon "rational". To be reasonable is to acknowledge that there may be a third, fourth, or who knows how many other options available. To be reasonable means we can try this because it seems like a really good idea, and when we find out it isn't working as expected, we can modify it, fine-tune it without having to throw out everything we've discovered thus far. To be reasonable means that everyone has a say, and what makes the most sense becomes clear.

Unfortunately, capitalists (to simply stay with the topic) are not reasonable people. They are absolute rationalists. The fact that their entire system is built upon questionable assumptions not only never occurs to them, they deny that such is even a possibility. If you base all you believe on one single notion -- in the capitalist's case: private property -- then a questioning of that notion, that assumption in this case, is a life-threatening act. As such, they are willing to resort to life-threatening actions to enforce their point of view (cf. the current escalation of political violence against the citizenry).

Capitalism can only work if private property is the non plus ultra of human existence. It is the most fundamental, basic and essential assumption upon which the whole idea rests. This is an assumption. And one which I question vigorously.

It has become so that property rights have now superceded, have now overwhelmed, human rights. We -- you and I -- both as members of a community and living breathing human beings, are no where near as important as whatever resources may be under our feet. We have created a system of belief that holds to be true that things are more important and more valuable that people. And this, all based on an assumption. It is supported, of course, by another assumption, that the world can be reduced to either-or, that we live in a rational world. This assumption is just as faulty.

The time has come, dear reader, that we all start questioning assumptions.

Even more problems with "arguments"

In most general terms, we can sum up our discussion thus far as "capitalism is an economic system that uses 'stuff' (money and resources) to produce other 'stuff' in an attempt to increase well-being". Like any other statement (and by now you should be getting the hint: the use of some words simply demand further clarification), this one raises a couple of questions as well, such as "Whose stuff?" and "Whose well-being?"

Today's free-market advocate will tell you that you should be able to use whatever is available anywhere it may be and in the end, all of us will benefit or be better off. I don't think that's a misstatement of the argument that is at the root of the current economic debate. And here we come to the crux of the matter.

The entire capitalist argument (more stuff is better for everyone) simply holds no water and this for the very simple reason that is based on an assumption, and this assumption is faulty. We assume that more stuff is better, even in the face of contradictory information. Yes, more stuff is better for some (limited few) but not for everyone. The assumption is that if I am doing better, you'll do better too. There's no evidence to support this, it is merely an assumption. In fact, capitalism (both as conceived and practiced) is built on a whole number of assumptions, all of which fail to hold up under scrutiny, but more on that later.

The real issue with all argumentation these days is that the arguments themselves are built upon assumptions that are never questioned, they are simply taken as givens, as if they were normal. They aren't. Capitalism, for example, has told us that more is better and the word they use to describe that is "progress". To them it is progress that we now have cars, and high-speed transportation, for example. These things make our lives "better". But what is better? That I have to spend four hours a day getting to and from work? That I see my family less because I spend so much time commuting? That the pollution that is caused by both cars and high-speed transportation which is demonstratably ruining our health and threatening the planet is a small price to pay for what? convenience? What is better about that?

We pick certain things, say they are more important than others, and everything is OK. But it isn't. Yes, we've been able to develop cures to a lot of diseases, and we've created as many more (either through stress or genetic and chemical manipulation that could eradicate our entire species); we have reduced the amount of time we need to meet our basic needs, but we've filled that free time with producing for others so that they may have even more than they already do; we have developed technologies that could connect us instantly, but we use them to oppress and control. You will have to excuse me if I don't get the whole "progress" argument.

The reason I don't is because it, like capitalism, is based on an assumption: more is better. We know that in most cases this is not true. Chocolate is good, more chocolate may have adverse effects on our health; security is good, more security quickly becomes surveillance which is not such a good thing. Assumptions are dangerous things. We should be careful when dealing with assumptions. Our biggest problem is that we assume that assumptions are true. They aren't, they are simply assumptions. We need to be able to question our assumptions in order to be clear on what we are really demanding. This is a learnable skill that, unfortunately, most of us have never learned, and which many more have never had the opportunity to learn. Fortunately, it's never too late to learn it.

The next time: a few (hopefully) helpful tips.

More problems with "arguments"

We're actually pretty safe with our assumptions about something as basic and physical as "breakfast". Nobody really cares if you want cold pizza, steak and eggs, cereal, bread and coffee or a three-course warm meal. There are other things, however, that others do care about (for whatever reasons), but they, too, function a lot like breakfast. We do them, believe them, advocate them, support them, and, sometimes even, fight for them ... because we don't realize that, in the end, they're just like breakfast.

Let's stick with "capitalism" because it's something we believe we all know something about and just about every one of us has some kind of opinion about it. When we leave the realm of the concrete (e.g. "breakfast"), we leave the world of "nomal" for the world of "right". We may think it is silly that other people eat cucumbers and tomatoes for breakfast, but as long as their amongst themselves, it really doesn't bother us, it doesn't really affect us, and so we simply don't care. When it comes to abstract ideas (and "capitalism" is an abstract idea), we start thinking in terms of right and wrong. It starts mattering to us because it affects us directly.

What most people overlook at this moment is the fact that we have placed one thing (breakfast) into an individual framework (even though other cultures may do it differently, everyone if free to have for breakfast whatever the hell they like) while the other thing (capitalism) is placed into a collective framework, and by that I mean a framework that extends beyond the individual. Capitalism affects all of us, regardless of culture. (Oh sure, there can be variations as to how it is implemented from culture to culture, but the fundamental principles remain the same.) So, what is this "-ism" that affects us all?

In its simplest form, I suppose we could say that "capitalism" is an economic way of thinking in which capital (most often money, but it could also be resources of other kinds) generates weath. That doesn't sound bad at all, does it? Sounds downright harmless, if you ask me, but we all know that there is a lot of angry discussion surrounding the term these days. My last few posts could be seen by some (not incorrectly) as a direct attack on that very simple principle. What could possibly be wrong with that? It's a good question, and one that deserves an answer.

In our simple definition, we have two concepts that, at least to me, need further clarification: "capital" and "wealth". We think we know what these are, but I would ask, do we really? Let's work backwards. What is "wealth"? In many quarters, this simply means being rich, having a lot of money, having more than enough to satisfy subsistence requirements (food, clothing, shelter) and to be able to have some joy in life. In other words, it has something to do with an abundance of material possessions that makes life "more worth living" (or something like that). If we trace the etymology (history) of the word, we find that it comes from the Middle English "weal", meaning "well-being"; the "-th" ending indicating "a state of"; that is, wealth, at root, means a state of well-being. Hey, who could argue with that?

One problem arises when we mistake the words for the reality. What actually is "well-being"? Do we agree on what the terms means? I don't think so. For some it means having a lot; for others it means have very little (minimalists). Who's right? And then, we have the matter of capital? What's that? As intimated above, sometimes it's money, sometimes it is other things, like land, natural resources, or more).

At this point the observant reader will realize that some kind of tension is building. To move on, we need to resolve that tension, which I'll attempt to do next time.

The problem with "arguments"

Having thought about the last couple of posts, I thought it might be a good idea to take a break and explain something so fundamental that we tend to overlook it. The human mind is a fascinating object of study. How we think, why we think the things we do, how we learn, what we remember ... the list truly goes on and on ... are really quite mind-boggling subjects. We know something about how the brain functions, but we know very little about how it works. And, what is even more important, we have hardly any idea what "consciousness" is and how it may (or may not) be related to the brain. All we know is that the brain is involved.

Now, I'm not going to clear these matter up by any means. I'm not even going address most of them. What I am going to address is one way that we come to believe things and why we are ready to accept some arguments while rejecting others, even though those we reject may be more compelling. I'm going to keep this simple, but I'm not going to make it simplistic. There are some things about the process than everyone can, and should, know.

We all gather sensory data through our five senses (smelling, tasting, touching, hearing, and seeing). We don't, however, gather exactly the same data. Instead, we gather this data and process it through all the filters that our parents, teachers, society, culture, and friends have helped us to create. We like certain things, dislike others, really love some things and hate others. We all experience the "same reality", but we process it in very individual ways. That's one side of the coin.

While the five senses are a great starting point for physical things, they are not so well suited for abstract ideas and notions, things that happen only in our minds. Some people prefer red to blue, others prefer liberals to conservatives, some think capitalism is good, others that it is evil incarnate. This kind of perception is what has always fascinated me the most.

The point is this: regardless of what we get through our senses, we process it through filters that we have consciously and unconsciously created. Our experiences, upbringing, society and culture have all played a very significant role in all this. I have to go back to my overworked "breakfast" example to explain: What do you eat for breakfast (usually)? Why? When you look around the world to see what other people think what constitutes a "normal" breakfast, you will most likely find yourself asking, "Why would anybody eat that for breakfast?" Yes, why? Because to them, it is normal. Whatever any of us has for breakfast is simply "normal" to us. No more, no less. There is not one normal, but all normals are equal. What we know, what we are used to, what seems to suit us is what we consider "normal". There is nothing to prove it, there are no reasons to justify it that would convince others to change their ways. It is simply a matter of assuming that whatever we (and those around us) do is "normal". In other words, normalcy is really nothing more than an assumption.

Assumptions, however, are rather tenuous things. What happens if we find that our assumptions are misplaced? What happens if it becomes clear that our assumptions are harmful? What do we do?

Good questions. More next time.

Shoot the messenger

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In olden times, if the messenger brought bad news, chances were good he's pay for it with his life. It wasn't his fault the news was bad, but he paid the price anyway. In retrospect, we considered it a grave injustice, but we practice it everyday ourselves.

One of the underlying themes of my past few posts has been just this: our willing to shoot the messenger. In any discussion of a current event or current situation, the easiest, quickest, and most devastating response is to simply call the source into question. There are not a few people who actually consider themselves serious, critical thinkers who have nothing better to offer in the way of discussion. This is unfortunate.

The English philosopher R.G. Collingwood has been my role model for this. In his brief, but extremely readable, fascinating autobiography (called An Autobiography, in English; the German title was Denken, "Thinking"), he relates how most of his colleagues belonged to the Logical Positivist or Analytic schools of thought (the former being focused, according to itself as the logical clarification of thought, whereby formal grammars and logic play a dominant role; the latter being influenced to a great extent by mathematics and the natural sciences, allegedly focusing on narrow themes and logical precision ... that is to say, it's more a style than type of thinking). He himself fit in much better with what is often characterized as Continental Philosophy, in particular Hermeneutics (the art and science of interpretation and understanding). In their monthly department meetings, they would present their latest findings and debate them. Their biggest fear, apparently, was that Collingwood would want to take their side. He believed the best way to figure out whether a position or argument was valuable was to use it as conscientiously as possible. To do this, one has to delve into it and understand how it works. Too often, Collingwood revealed that the argument was a mere house of cards. You're right. He didn't have a lot of friends in the faculty. People who are looking for truth often don't have a lot of friends.

I miss guys like Collingwood. One of my two best friends from college feeds me regularly with articles and op-eds from publications that I would most likely never dream of reading. But, since he's a friend, and I respect him, of course, I seriously engage these readings and we discuss them, sometimes lively and heatedly, but in a very rewarding and satisfying manner. I always learn something, and often something important. He allows me to infuse a little of Collingwood's spirit into my own life. He does the same with the stuff I send him.

Unfortunately, my friend is pretty much one of a kind. I encounter far too many people who are busy building their own little bubbles in which to exist. I don't know why, I can only surmise, and for the moment I believe that this behavior is so widespread because there are simply too many things wrong with our world. Keep your job; whatever you do, don't get fired; keep a low profile; arm yourself to the teeth, if necessary; don't get involved; don't get out of line; but whatever you do, don't think too seriously about what you're doing.

And the best way to keep that process going is to simply shoot whoever shows up with something you really don't want to hear.

The art of understanding discussions

The most obvious and poignant example of not being able to discuss anything (reasonably or otherwise) is American politics today. I don't want anyone thinking I'm picking on the Americans in particular, but what they are showing the world these days is downright embarrassing.

When seen from the outside, all one notices is that two sides have crystallized which are, beneath the surface, surprisingly similar (invested with corporate influence, overtly oppressive, violent, undemocratic, hypocritical, power-obsessed, disrespectful of human rights ... the list goes on), but on the surface portrayed as diametrically opposed. When that organization that is allegedly representative of the people pass certain legislation, say, health care legislation, and the other side tries to repeal it 40 times, you have to ask yourself what the real issue is. When you have religiously questionable beliefs being passed off as reasonable arguments in a discussion, you have to ask yourself if these people are of sound mind. When you have tenets of a particular religious faith being presented in opposition to sound scientific evidence, and when you have the full-scale denial of scientific evidence because it doesn't fit in with what you want to be true, well, then you don't have much basis for any kind of discussion about anything anymore. This is no longer reasoned discussion or debate, this is childish misbehavior.

Oh, I don't think it would bother me, or the rest of the world, so much if Americans weren't so willing to take their current brand of incoherency a-peddling. There are issues that need to be discussed, such as climate change, capitalism, the financial system, globalization, the role of corporate influence, the role of national sovereignty, war, crime, aggression, human rights, just to name a few, but what we have, increasingly, is a situation in which no reasoned discussion; that is, no reasonable search for real solutions, is possible.

This infantilism that American politics embodies is spreading elsewhere. It apparently has no trouble trickling down. It is becoming increasingly difficult to talk to, let alone debate anything with others. Of course, I'm speaking of my own personal experience, but I don't think I'm all that different than most people. Who is actually willing to engage an opponent's ideas? Who is willing to read or consider "the other side's" positions? Who still wants to be reasonable about anything?

I'm very fortunate in that I still have a few friends and people with whom I discuss things that are tolerant enough to consider something other than what's in their own heads. How often have you heard statements like "Oh, you read that in The Nation/The American Conservative, well why would you believe anything written in that rag?" How many folks criticize Adam Smith but have never read him? How many reject Marx outright, but have never read him? How many people do you know who are willing, and able, to follow an extended argument ... say, something longer than a Tweet or a Facebook post ... and who can contribute to the discussion?

My hope lies in the fact that I know there are some folks who still can. My worry is that there aren't enough of them to end up making a difference. How many of you still think you can? How many of you want to make a difference?

The fundamentals of the art of discussion

What applies to any argument being contributed to a discussion (or a debate, which may be more formal or is simply more intense); that is, those factors we considered last time; are equally applicable to the discussion as a whole.

The matter of context is that arguments are centered on a given subject. Changing the subject in mid-stream is never a good idea, just like changing horses isn't. If the subject is, say, the role of austerity in solving economic problems, bringing up alleged cultural shortcomings of economy involved or insisting upon misconduct or weak decisions in past leading up to the crisis in the first place is simply off-topic. If we've got a problem, there is certainly room for valid discussions as to how we got into the mess in the first place. These are not, necessarily, arguments for a particular approach to a solution. Changing a whole society's behavior may take longer than we can afford to wait to get things headed in a positive direction.

Evidence is certainly applicable to any argument being made. And here, we're talking primarily about relevant evidence; evidence that has a bearing on the issue as a whole. One of the most dubious forms of discussion is the one that excludes certain types for certain reasons. We saw this most recently in the Bradley Manning trial, where the judge disallowed arguments by the defense that Manning acted, at least in part, due to the obligation placed upon him by the very Code of Military Justice that was being used to prosecute him. The motives one has for committing a deed are, in my estimation, invaluable in determining the severity of the deed. Nothing we humans construct -- particularly our so-called justice system -- is digitally accurate. Things humans do are never black or white, in fact, they are rarely black and white. There are numerous grey areas which need to be dealt with seriously and cautiously.

As for coherency and consistency, I think I'm pretty safe in assuming that every one of us has been involved in a discussion, at least once in our lives, in which at the end, no one really knew what was being argued about. Somehow the discussion didn't just get off topic (as pointed out in relation to "context" above), rather it got out of control. Not knowing what was talked about calls into question the time and energy that was spent talking.

One additional factor plays a role here, though. It is essential for the success of any discussion that the discussants acknowledge each others' worthiness to participate. If you consider your discussion partner inferior in any way, there's no use having a discussion, you are probably only trying to prove you are right. If you refuse to discuss certain topics with others who have a different position, then you are tacitly expressing that the other is unworthy of talking to in the first place. If you only want to engage the person, not his or her arguments, then you really aren't discussing at all (this is formally known as ad hominem argumentation), then you're wasting everybody's time. But in any event, you are demonstrating that you need not be considered as a serious discussion partner. In other words, if you aren't willing to learn, if you aren't willing to perhaps change/modify your own position based on the course of the discussion, if you are only trying to "prove" you're right, you're not discussing, you are merely pontificating, and Lord knows we've got more than enough of that going on these days.

An introduction to the art of discussion

One of the things we should have learned in school is how to discuss a topic, even a controversial one. I know, we don't have classes in logic and rhetoric anymore (which I personally find sad, but that's just me), but there are still ample opportunities, in all social-science and language classes at any rate, to develop the skills and abilities to discuss something reasonably. When we look around us, particularly at our political landscape, it becomes painfully obvious that even if these were taught in school, a lot of folks were either sick that day or were simply not paying attention. But that's another topic of another day.

One of the things we should have learned, for example, is that context matters. The expectations that we bring to, say, a newspaper article should be different than those we bring to an op-ed. We should expect less bias and more facts in the former, and not be surprised by more bias and fewer facts in the latter. Each, in its own way, has something to say, but they say fundamentally different things. Or, we might expect an historical novel to be less accurate fact-wise, say, than a history of the events in question, but this may or may not be the case. History is often written by the victors; novels are often written by seekers of truth. Things may be reversed, but to determine that, we need to investigate further to discover what the real story is.

Another thing we should have learned is that evidence matters. (This is one of those places where I think German has a leg up on English. In English we have the word "evidence", but the Germans have both Belege (evidence that supports or refutes) and Beweise (evidence that proves or is categorical). In many of my discussions with English-speakers (native or not), this distinction is too often a source of misunderstanding.) Whatever we maintain; that is, whatever thesis or assertion we advance, should be substantiated in some way by corroborating evidence. This can take many forms, depending on the subject of the discussion. It might be facts (that is, things that actually happened or can be verified as being as they are presented), theories (in the case of more abstract discussions where not all the facts are in), arguments of others (which should be sourced and accessible to other discussion participants), perhaps experience (if verifiable and relevant), or perhaps scientific studies (quantitative as well as qualitative) or similar research, and much more. In other words, we like to get the feeling that our discussion partner just didn't simply make up his or her arguments as the discussion was going along.

And finally, we should have learned that coherency and consistency matter. By coherency, I mean the fact that what is being presented makes sense in some way. A science-fiction novel may be very coherent, but since it lacks verifiability, we tend to push it into the fiction category. This may disqualify it is evidence in a discussion of propulsion technology, but it may be valuable as an outside-the-box example for a discussion of future propulsion technology. Consistency means that that the parts fit together well. There are no big leaps between parts of the argument, that there are no huge logical gaps (like the cartoon of the two scientists discussing a formula on the blackboard where the one says to the other, "... and here a miracle happens ..."), that the discussion is what we might also called focused.

These may appear obvious to many of you, but if you stop take a look around at what is being said and discussed everyday, you quickly become aware of how little of any of these three factors can be found. Maybe since we stopped teaching them, we've forgotten how to use them or why they are important. At least that's the feeling that I get ... unfortunately, too often.

The fundamentals of the art of understanding

Last time, I tried to show that we base our understanding of things, to a large extent, on assumptions we have about how things are, and that these assumptions are as good as never challenged. These assumptions lead to our biases about things. If they gain the upper hand, they become what we call prejudices. A prejudice is simply an assumption that one refuses to give up even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The question is, then, where do these assumptions come from?

Any number of situations and circumstances are involved. There is the culture into which we are born. Cultures are defined by what they take for granted about reality. The language(s) we speak also play an important role. There is no single one-to-one correspondence between one language and another; something is always lost in translation. Our socialization plays perhaps the largest role. By this I mean our family and immediate surroundings in which we grow up. There may be, say, an American or German culture, but how this culture is lived differs between New York and San Francisco as much as between Hamburg and Munich. The same holds true of language: dialectical differences emphasize some things and de-emphasize others. So, how our parents see the world greatly influences how we end up seeing the world and what we end up taking for granted. For the "good" child, it is because of the influences; for the "bad" child, it is in spite of them. Finally, our formal education plays an exceedingly strong role in all of this, for in school we don't just learn content, we learn how to read, learn, play games (of all sorts, even social ones) and what is acceptable beyond the boundaries of our own limited, personal communities.

Everybody does this. Everybody goes through this. And everybody conforms or does not conform to the pressures and learning processes all of this represents in different ways. We are, after all, individuals. In other words, the outcomes of the same process may be -- is most likely -- different from one person to the next, yet the underlying principle remains the same: assumptions, pre-suppositions, perhaps even prejudices are formed, and these are the basic building blocks of how we think, how we assess, how we evaluate, how we judge, how we discuss, and how we debate.

The big question that suddenly arises here, however, is how are we to know what deep, dark, secrets are lying beneath our discussion partners' or debate opponents' positions and arguments? How are we going to deal with them? The questions are legitimate, to be sure, but the answer is not as difficult to find as you may think: just like it says in the Good Book, "by their fruits, you shall know them". Yes, we only need take seriously what they are saying (or writing or doing) and a closer look at these can reveal what some of those fundamental assumptions are. We are then free(r) to deal with the arguments themselves. We can draw some reasonable conclusions about what might be driving a particular argument thereby making it easier to deal with the substance of that argument and not who in particular is delivering it.

An introduction to the art of understanding

No one likes to think they don't understand something, especially if they're convinced they know something about it. We live in a very complex, dynamic, data-rich environment these days, and it is not always as easy to keep things straight as we might like. We're all busy. Few of us have any real time to ourselves, time to think or reflect or evaluate thoughts and ideas. Compounding the "problem", if you will, is that most everything we base our understanding on comes to us via language, and anyone who has ever seriously dealt with language as an object of study or who has learned, or even tried to learn, a language other than his/her native one knows that language is at best an ambiguous medium of communication.

Our lack of time to serious engage what we hear and read is a huge contributor to the problem of miscommunication and misunderstandings. There is no doubt about that. It is not the only cause. Just as serious is the fact that most people never had the opportunity to learn how to critically engage what they hear and read, and many who got a taste of it think they've mastered it, even though they haven't.

Don't get me wrong. I don't doubt for a second that this latter group is as sincere as anyone else, but we all have to realize that having an opinion should be the result of thought, not the replacement for thought. Thinking about things -- seriously thinking about things -- takes time, energy, skill, and practice.

Every one of us assumes much more about reality than we are ready or willing to admit. For the most part, most people aren't even aware that we start from some very fundamental assumptions. For example, there are those who believe that people are inherently bad (or evil or sinful or cruel or greedy or even some combination of these), others that humans are inherently good (or cooperative or social or kind or loving or perhaps some combination of these). In both cases, however, we are dealing with assumptions. This particular kind of assumption is actually called a pre-supposition; that is, we suppose it is so and hence we don't question its validity, because to us it is simply given that things are thus and so.

Assumptions are neither good nor bad, in general, we all have them and there are simply some things about life that we can't know for sure. The problem is that most of us are unaware of what our fundamental assumptions and pre-suppositions are, and as a result, we are not aware of how much they influence our understanding of what we see, hear, and read. For example, for a person who believes that people are inherently bad, stories of sacrifice and altruism will be met with general skepticism. One might even argue that these people were really doing what they did to gain something for themselves. On the other hand, someone who believes that people are inherently good will "explain" bad things that happen in terms of how abused or mistreated the perpetrator might have been which caused him or her to do whatever heinous deed is in question. What both of these simple situations have in common is that they are not reasoned, they are simply assumed. They are the starting points from which we start to build our understanding of the situations or events involved.

In our hectically paced modern lives, it is certainly difficult to find the time and focus to think about why we believe what we do, but it colors everything we think we understand. It doesn't make understanding more difficult, it only makes it, in the end, less certain.

Occam's razor

In keeping with the last entry, I'd like to continue with the theme of simplicity. Last time we saw that the world is by nature complex, whereas most everything we humans get our hands (feet, minds, ...) on gets complicated. What is more, complicated things are difficult, but complex ones are not really.

Sure, I can hear all you scientists out there yelling that we've only begun scratching the surface of understanding of many of the world's phenomena, from the human genome to the intellectuality of one-celled organisms to parallel universes to slicing bread. But, we should not mistake the map for the territory. I fully agree that we've only begun scratching the surface because from the onset we are complicating things. Complex things - with a bit of patience and perseverance - can be grasped, but we have to get our egos out of the way and let our consciousness work its magic.

Of course, since we're such technological creatures, we need tools. We love tools. Most of us don't work well with tools, but we love them anyway. And one tool that can help us out here is Occam's Razor. Well, this isn't really a razor like the one's we use to shave with, rather the term refers to a way of thinking, a sharp way of thinking, a heuristic, and by thinking sharply and cleanly, we can avoid a lot of complication.

As a side note, the tool is named after William of Ockham (ca. 1285-1349), an English logician and Franciscan friar, to whom it is credited although he didn't come up with it. The same thought as the razor are to be found in Maimonides (1138?-1204), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), and John Duns Scotus (1266?-1308). It was Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) who first used the term itself.

The form most often used by Occam himself is numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, or, for those of you who opted out of Latin in school, "plurality ought never be posited without necessity". This should be thought along with the principle of economy which was well known to him and his predecessors, namely frustra fit per plura quod potest fiere per pauciora, or "it is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer". One of the most common formulations today is

Explanations should never multiply causes without necessity; when two explanations are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest full explanation is preferable.

So, I think you can see where I'm going with this. The next time you listen to all those explanations on the news why gas prices must be tied to oil prices, or why it "makes economic sense" to ship tomatoes from Florida to Mexico to be packaged so that they can be shipped to New York for sale, or why there is allegedly some inalienable right for private citizens (as opposed to citizens who are part of an official militia, like the Swiss) to own guns, or that a society can afford to pay CEOs hundreds of millions but can't see to it that single mothers can make the rent, or why any one religion got it all right while all others got it all wrong (... the list goes on ...), think of William and his razor.

It's been a long time since William and longer since we took him seriously, so let's take his razor then as the goal to strive for. In the meantime, any simple, sensible explanation will do. Do we still have it in us, or have we lost it completely?