How to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 17: Conversations Worth Having

Chapter 17: Conversations Worth Having

Greetings once again, hypothetical newborn baby!  Instead, I'm here once again to teach you another Life Lesson. I had to learn these at the School of Hard Knocks. No, I'm not claiming that you're not as able as me to learn those lessons.  I'm just trying to spare you some pain and frustration.  OK OK!  I admit that this is merely a thought experiment by which I am trying to set forth the most important things I've learned in 65 years. By the way, if you aren’t completely satisfied with these lessons, I’ll refund all of the money you paid for them ! This is Chapter 17 already.  Wow.  Aren't you tired of hearing my voice? No?  OK. Then I'll continue. If you need to review any of the past lessons, can find them all here. 

Today we’re going to talk about conversations. That term doesn’t simply mean talking with someone any more than food is defined as anything you put your mouth. Er, I can already see you drooling at you stare at my car keys. Just settle down now . . . OK, you can suck on your toes while you listen. That’s cool.

There are many types of conversations, but they fall on a continuum from simple factual exchanges on (“Is it raining?” “Yes”) to collaborations in which the parties set out to figure out a complex topic as a joint exercise by celebrating each others’ contributions.

Psychologist Scott Barry Kauffman recently Tweeted:

Imagine what discourse would be like if instead of it being conceptualized as a "match" to see who "wins", discussions were seen as mutual attempts to get at a shared truth or seen as a shared mission to get outside of ourselves and transcend our individual perspectives.

That would be a nice world, the kind I can imagine happening 24/7 at the big house where the philosophers and other "virtuous pagans" hang out just on the other side of Dante's River Acheron. You, however need to live in the world you were handed. You ended up on a Grade A planet in a Grade C era with regard to conversations.

Right now, your interactions will mostly be where some other baby grabs your toy and you cry. Here’s the problem you'll encounter when you get older: Even if you optimistically join a discussion hoping it is of the “Kauffman” variety, that doesn’t guarantee an enlightening and engaging experience. It takes two to tango and many people would rather honk at you (don’t look at ME as I say that!) than celebrate each other’s differing perspectives. Tango is the correct metaphor because, at their best, conversations are like dancing with other people. If either of you are stepping on the others’ feet, neither of you are going to have a good time.

Here's why this era is so fraught for those who want to share complex ideas with others (especially on contentious topics): We live in a time where the so-called news media makes much of its money by stirring up conflict and even hate. It’s the same thing with social media. The companies in charge of these things have decided in their corporate consciences that it's quite simple, actually: no conflict, no money. This has wrecked a pretty decent (though admittedly imperfect) conversational thing we had going on for decades.

Here’s how it so often plays out: Let’s say that you join a conversation in an open frame of mind, interested in freely sharing perspectives on an issue, but the other person is not so inclined. The other person, having been steeped in news media and social media, and now cooked to an extra-fever pitch of loneliness and rage during the pandemic, is committed to scoring points, schooling you and “winning” the discussion. I know, right? Why should there ever be a “winner” to a discussion, but that’s how many people see it these day. And they have plenty of tactic for “winning,” including these: [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingHow to Be a Human Animal, Chapter 17: Conversations Worth Having

Ukraine: Forbidden Discussions

I'm despondent that the mainstream news outlets are so intensely jingoistic, so focused on the logistics of war, so unwilling to look into the mirror. This is not surprising given the vast numbers of retired military and spy state talking heads who now work for the left leaning MSM. It's also unsurprising given that this is how war propaganda always works, illustrated brilliantly by "War Made Easy."

Here are a three snippets of conversation that I with the news media would take much more seriously:

First, this is from Freddie DeBoer's Substack:

[R]ight now, [the United States is] investing hideous amounts of treasure to maintain an order that we can’t afford and that no one really believes we can maintain. Perhaps the Ukrainians will beat back the Russians and they’ll be welcomed into NATO and we can all cheer that the good guys won. But hegemony does not last forever, and sooner or later you’re going to have to ask more adult, more useful questions than, “who’s the goodie, and who’s the baddie?” Otherwise the superpower eventually goes down the hard way.

I find myself considering this quote from a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

When the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons in breach of its assurances to Russia, did it ever think about the consequences of pushing a big country to the wall?

It doesn’t take sympathy for Putin to see that this is a very good question.

Second, Tulsi Gabbard tweeted this:

Third, Matt Taibbi reminds us that history matters:

I would like to point out that we already tried regime change in Russia. I remember, because I was there. And, thanks to a lot of lurid history that’s being scrubbed now with furious intensity, it ended with Vladimir Putin in power. Not as an accident, or as the face of a populist revolt against Western influence — that came later — but precisely because we made a long series of intentional decisions to help put him there.

Once, Putin’s KGB past, far from being seen as a negative, was viewed with relief by the American diplomatic community, which had been exhausted by the organizational incompetence of our vodka-soaked first partner, Boris Yeltsin. Putin by contrast was “a man we can do business with,” a “liberal, humane, and decent European” of “alert, controlled poise” and “well-briefed acuity,” who was open to anything, even Russia joining NATO. “I don’t see why not,” Putin said. “I would not rule out such a possibility.”

Fourth, this excerpt is from Glenn Greenwald's detailed analysis of our tribal dysfunction that mushroom when that exciting topic of war hits the tabletop:

In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those warning of the possible dangers of U.S. involvement were assured that such concerns were baseless. The prevailing line insisted that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating that the U.S. become militarily involved in a conflict with Russia. That the concern was based not on the belief that the U.S. would actively seek such a war, but rather on the oft-unintended consequences of being swamped with war propaganda and the high levels of tribalism, jingoism and emotionalism that accompany it, was ignored. It did not matter how many wars one could point to in history that began unintentionally, with unchecked, dangerous tensions spiraling out of control. Anyone warning of this obviously dangerous possibility was met with the “straw man” cliché: you are arguing against a position that literally nobody in D.C. is defending.

. . .

There is a reason I devoted the first fifteen minutes of my live video broadcast on Thursday about Ukraine not to the history that led us here and the substance of the conflict (I discussed that in the second half), but instead to the climate that arises whenever a new war erupts, instantly creating propaganda-driven, dissent-free consensus. There is no propaganda as potent or powerful as war propaganda. It seems that one must have lived through it at least once, as an engaged adult, to understand how it functions, how it manipulates and distorts, and how one can resist being consumed by it.

I will end with a photo:

Continue ReadingUkraine: Forbidden Discussions

The Long Tradition of Dividing People Into Good People and Bad People

Matt Taibbi, writing about Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States:

No matter how interesting a book he or she is able to write, any author who admits to looking out at the world and seeing only “victims and executioners” needs psychological help. Unfortunately, Zinn in this respect turned out to be a pioneer, presaging a generation of comic-book thinkers who understand things in binary terms, forever preoccupied with cramming people in neat categories of oppressors and oppressed.

Such mental habits are the fashion now and will definitely put you in a bind on Thanksgiving. How can I eat turkey and stuffing with a smile, when Columbus massacred the Arawaks? When the English forced the Wampanoags off their land and made many convert to Christianity? When Lincoln told Horace Greeley, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it”?

How? Maybe because you’re more than three years old, and don’t need fairy tales to be real in order to enjoy dinner with family and a football game?

Taibbi's article is "Thanksgiving is Awesome: In reply to the haters. Happy holiday, everyone."

On a more serious note, I read Zinn's book when I was a teenager and it was a much needed shock to my system, given that I had, to that point, been exposed to a steady stream of textbooks and teachers who argued American Exceptionalism. I agree with Taibbi that both of these approaches are simplistic.

Continue ReadingThe Long Tradition of Dividing People Into Good People and Bad People

The Political Left Needs to Start Judging More Wisely

I saw this Rogan interview with Krystal and Saagar. I've watched a lot of Joe Rogan for the past two years. He leans far left on most issues he discusses, but that's not good enough for most people and news media on the political left, who seek to purification, not nuanced discussion. Many of them have no idea what to do with people like Rogan, who hold heterodox opinions. They reject the idea of human complexity and they are increasibly thinking in cartoons. That is the subject of Krystal Ball's 7-minute commentary. It was spot on. I've seen this rejection of the "impure" on FB over and over. IMO, this is ruining the political left and sending many voters over to the political right, which is morally bankrupt.

My advice to people on the political left: Quit demonizing people who are not aligned with your views. Quit writing off everyone who voted differently than you. Engage openly and respectfully with your family, neighbors and friends who think differently than you. I'm an atheist, but Jesus had it right when he gave the Sermon on the Mount: "Love your enemies." I give thanks today that we don't all think alike. And I give thanks for the wisdom of John Stuart Mill. And I give thanks for the courage and soaring inspirational thoughts of Martin Luther King: Hate cannot drive out hate and we should judge each other only by the content of our character. Let's start judging each other more wisely starting today.

Continue ReadingThe Political Left Needs to Start Judging More Wisely

The Best System for Determining What is True

I'm reading The Constitution of Knowledge by Jonathan Rauch (2021). Rauch has written an extraordinary book offering a detailed airtight case for why we need each other in order to determine what is true. We need a mediated social system in order to filter out the despots and crackpots, but who will mediate such a system? The incredible answer is no one in particular. The system powers the process, but the system cannot function in the absence of three prerequisites. The following passage sums up what we need to get the job done:

An epistemic regime—that is, a public system for adjudicating differences of belief and perception and for developing shared and warranted conclusions about truth—should provide three public goods.

First, knowledge. The system should be competent at distinguishing reality from non-reality, and at building on previous discoveries so that knowledge accumulates, thereby generating even more knowledge.

Second, freedom. The system should encourage rather than repress human autonomy, creativity, and empowerment. It should welcome and exploit human diversity, especially diversity of opinion, and it should not allow any person or faction to use force or intimidation to control what others say or believe.

Third, peace. The system should reward social conciliation, maximize the number of disagreements which are resolvable, and compartmentalize and marginalize disagreements when it cannot resolve them. It should inculcate intellectual values which abhor violence and bullying, and it should establish institutions and norms which tolerate and even embrace disagreement and doubt.

No one should expect any knowledge-producing system to be perfect, or close to it. Still, many centuries of history show that the liberal system—the reality-based community—comes closer to perfection than any other human social invention.

Next, we need two rules (p. 89):

The fallibilist rule: Ho one gets the final say. You may claim that a statement is established as knowledge only if it can be debunked, in principle, and onlyinsofar as it withstands attempts to debunk it. That is, you are entitled to claim that a statement is objectively true only insofar as it is both checkable and has stood up to checking, and not otherwise. In practice, of course, determining whether a particular statement stands up to checking is sometimes hard, and we have to argue about it. But what counts is the way the rule directs us to behave: you must assume your own and everyone else’sfallibility and you must hunt for your own and others’errors, even if you are confident you are right. Otherwise, you are not reality-based. The Constitution of Knowledge

The empirical rule: No one has personal authority. You may claim that a statement has been established as knowledge only insofar as the method used to check it gives the same result regardless of the identity of the checker, and regardless of the source of the statement. Whatever you do to check a proposition must be something that anyone can do, at least in principle, and get the same result. Also, no one proposing a hypothesis gets a free pass simply because of who she is or what group she belongs to. Who you are does not count; the rules apply to everybody and persons are interchangeable. If your method is valid only for you or your affinity group or people who believe as you do, then you are not reality-based.

Continue ReadingThe Best System for Determining What is True