From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Oct 12 2002 - 20:47:33 MDT
I posed the question that forms the subject line of this old
thread, and mainly due to varied contributions from a lot of
people, have learned a good deal.
First, the question is ambiguous in that "differences" might
be taken to mean basic political ideology (the sense I meant
the question to be taken), or it might be taken to pertain
to a *particular* subject, e.g., can people discuss objectively
whether or not the U.S. should invade Iraq. Several people
took this latter meaning, made insightful comments, and IIRC
proposed that indeed such difficult subjects *can* be discussed
objectively, and that we in fact do so from time to time.
Second, the question is wrong in the sense that its literal
statement assumes that indeed it is the case that people cannot
discuss differences objectively, whereas---whether meaning 1 or
meaning 2 is taken above---some people do manage to discuss
differences objectively. I have admitted that I asked the
question rather provocatively out of a sense that the issue
(the first meaning) had been too often ducked. Several people
are annoyed at the practice of assuming anything in an honest
question, and took me to task for it in various ways. I'll
try to avoid that in the future.
As for the "meat", that is, the question that I wanted answered
---namely, why do people often seem so reluctant to address
the roots of their own political ideology, and what makes
leftists differ at base from rightists?---some progress was
also made. I'm very sorry that I have lost track of the
person who very eloquently said that a lot of people tend to
feel threatened, annoyed, and perhaps even bored by efforts
to focus upon *their* deepest motivations, or background, or
fundamental assumptions. TT did write however
"It is often quite a shock to have ones unacknowledged
assumptions exposed, let alone challenged. I think
that's where a lot of the emotional discord arises
when discussing political topics."
and I think that he's right on the money. So, in other words,
one major factor is people's squeamishness about self-examination.
Now I am here in this memo deliberately ignoring a host of
other dimensions to the furor that this subject line and
its descendants caused, but I intend to address them in
another thread soon.
Suffice it here to say that some people can consider such
investigations (as referred to in the subject line of this
thread) to be poorly motivated, subversive, immaterial,
and unsuitable (improper) for discussion.
Lee
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