Lets say there is a position someone holds, or an idea that they have, and you disagree with it, lets call it position X, so as not to offend anyone by choosing a position arbitrarily ([cough]….fundamentalism). No but seriously, position X, and you disagree with it.
Now there are three ways to go about a disagreement:
1) You can flat out say…no….you’re wrong, and I say ~X, (~ means not by the way). So, this is just rejecting this persons idea with no justification or reasoning. The issue is, that in arguing this way, all you’re doing is rejecting and not even hearing them out, because if you were to hear them out, my god you could be turned and influenced to their opinion, and you wouldn’t want that because you’re Right. But doesn’t this just perpetuate the constant war of attack and retaliation? (Of course that assumes attack and retaliation is bad, but whatever that’s my argument)
2) You can argue and reason against the person. Now the issue with this is that to “reasonably reason” you have to accept some of the premises/assumptions of what the other person is saying, you have to meet them halfway so to speak. Problem is that all this does is basically spawn odd analogous offspring of their argument, that are slightly different, because you go into it thinking you will show them they’re wrong, but all you end up doing is just slightly morphing both of your perspectives into a new perspective which someone will invariably disagree with, and on and on and on this goes. By arguing in this way, all we end up doing is meandering through the argument and ending up no where.
3) You can use logic, ahh of course logic, the savior of 99% of contemporary western philosophers–no offence to any philosophers out there, if your offended then maybe you’re in that 1% lol, hope that made you feel better. If you can prove a logical inconsistency within the persons argument, then you don’t need to come off as an asshole–via #1–or take on some of your opponents argumentative assumptions and thus end up in a meandering chain of analogous thinking–via #2. But, yes there is a problem with this as well. As much as we would all love to think that logic will bring us to the truth, logic is itself based on the changing senses or words, ideas and arguments, as well as the varying interpretations of what the person ‘probably’ means and how charitable of a reading you should do which is nested within the persons thinking as a whole, and many other varying contexts, and not to mention problems of translation if theres a language barrier. Further, logic, in trying to avoid these variables will propose ideas that are so precise that they end up not saying anything at all, they are so clear that they become transparent no-thing.
So, what are we left with? Are we left with pragmatism, just do whatever is most practical. Without even getting into the problems of what is really practical and for whom, it’s that sort of pragmatic calculative thinking that churns out genocides and the numbering of us people so that we can fit in as cogs in a machine. Further, choosing what’s practical is just another of the contexts that fits into the argument at hand, which means it is still all up to this problem that whatever method of argument you pursue, you are left with the problem that there is no way to conclude it, it will always lead nowhere.
But then, we are left with the question, what to do with argument?
What is argument?
Is it to ’see’ each others positions clearly and to come to a better understanding, maybe to reach some kind of conclusion, maybe you want to show that you are right and the other person is mistaken.
Imagine something with me, a race of telepathic beings. They are a special kind of telepathic though. They don’t merely hear each others thoughts, they also feel each others emotions, they feel each others very person, they understand everything that lead this person to do what they do, they feel it all, they feel everyones whole colored experience. How could you disagree in such a state of unity, it would be like disagreeing with your own leg–stubborn bastard!
If I saw the way you did, felt the way you did, and understood your justification and reason for all of your actions and ideas, would we even be 2 separate people anymore. Would we not be much closer to 1.
So, with any argument where we are getting closer and closer to ‘getting’ each other, a problem arises. We can’t get each other on the level of those telepathic’s, there is always this individual centre that is inaccessible to everyone. And this means that we can never, ever–until we are that sort of telepathic–understand each other fully. And this means that argument and disagreement will always necessarily arise in human life, so long as there is this separation.
So, what does this imply. Well first off this implies that we can’t know big ‘T’ Truth or big ‘R’ Reality, we just have our truth and our reality; and so, our disagreements do not come from misunderstanding the Truth or Reality, but our misunderstanding of each other. Because if you remember the talk of logic in their attempt to be precisely precise, they end up saying nothing. In trying to pin down reality and truth, those goals end up disappearing, yet in trying to step back and take them in, they disappear as well. So, what I guess I’m trying to say, is, let go of thinking we are disagreeing about Reality, and understand that we are simply disagreeing with each other because of our lack of understanding of each other, not Reality. So, with that may you listen more. We need not argue so as to complete the very important and serious task of elucidating Truth, and thus gain the wondrous credential of being right, correct, or doing the will of some divine being.
In seeing that a disagreement is merely an indication of the fact that we don’t ‘get’ each other, then this is kinda hopeful I think, because we’re no longer after the very seemingly important Truth of the matter, we’re after unity among us. And in that I find hope.
Of course one last problem emerges, isn’t my whole talk here, my own argument, my own disagreement? Yup, I guess this is all just another drop in the ocean of truths and I should just take my own advice and listen to you. Maybe I just don’t get you position X’ers yet? Maybe I need to listen, and feel as you do, then, I’ll get it, but in doing so, my disagreement disappears, my rightness disappears, maybe even a bit of me disappears! And then I’d have nothing to blog about.