Sex, Religion and Politics.

Lash Goth- The important thing is that you are attempting to make sense out of all the mishmash. Many people don't, and then get stuck on an issue like a broken record!

Craven has this right. We all think we have the "Truth," but if we put ourselves inside the skin of the other person, we discover a new and opposing "Truth."

What Soz sez about chunking is a very useful way of looking at how we deal with mass information.

Also, Soz, maybe your friend who searches the web for the "Truth" really just wants a point of view with which heer is comfortable. After all, how do we really know when we have found the truth about any given topic?

Hazlitt- With all the complexities of the world, is it questionable if one ever really knows the complete truth. It is beneficial though, to become knowledgable enough to discard those notions that meet with popular agreement, but are patently false!

Apropos of this topic, I was just surfing www.refdesk.com , and found their "Quote of the Day"

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I like the way Chogyam Trungpa describes the phenomenon that relates to what Phoenix found in the quote about being a mirror vs a window:

"The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in [a] cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns.When we are constantly recreating our basic patterns of behavior and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground. Instead, we wrap ourselves in our own dark environment, where our only companion is the smell of our own sweat. we regard this dank cocoon as a family heirloom or inheritance, and we don't want to give that bad-good, good-bad memory away."

Trungpa describes the process of trying to get out of this cocoon as opening our eyes wider, working towards an openness so we can lead our lives in the fullest way. the discipline of this is what he descibes as becoming a warrior.

I like this way of looking at life because so many opinions and attitudes originate in this cocoon, this place where we"chunk" our realities, and it can get very stale. I think it's true that when you open your eyes wider, you have more interest in what is outside your own chunking process, and it's actually very refreshing, rather than overwhelmingly chaotic.

Many years ago I was teaching Hmong people who had just been evacuated from Cambodia. these people were traumatized, entirely illiterate, and hadn't the faintest idea how to use the modern contraptions they found in their new homes in Philadelphia. It was almost impossible to get through to them verbally, but the connection we made was through the humor of our situation, and we spent a great deal of time just laughing at our predicament. They could not use their mountain-people realities in this new world, and I couldn't teach them mine, in a formal class, so we just had fun. It was the first real eye-opener I had about how different people's realities could be, and a very refreshing break out of my own cocoon.

dream2020- Wonderful story. I think that people would get so much more out of life, if they allowed themselves to take that first, unsteady step out of their current reality, and pushed themselves to look at what else is "out there".

Tolerance of ambiguity allows a person to reconcile and accommodate ideas that may be contradictory or information that may be inconsistent. Such a person does not see everything in terms of black and white but accepts that there are many shades of grey and that uncertainty and inconsistency must be accommodated

Booman said something really cool recently; something about debating to reach understanding, not to win. (Booman, you out there? What was it exactly?)

I totally agree with Dyslexia's and Dream's points. And that's a lot of why I participate on these boards. For example (and maybe this belongs on the "Break from Partisanship" thread), I was reflexively against bills regarding D&x ("partial-birth") abortions, because I saw it as a step in a campaign to overturn Roe vs. Wade. In discussing it here, I learned more, such as that the bills have provisions for medically necessary D&x, etc., so while I think it's silly to pass a bill that would have so little practical effect (the NYT recently stated that 2,000 D&x happen per year, Fishin' found sources that said around 3,000, but it's not known how many of those are NOT medically necessary -- everything I've found seems to indicate very, very few) and that it is indeed a step in a campaign, I'm NOT against eradicating what few unnecessary D&x's may occur.

My main thing in bringing up chunking is that I get a bit uncomfortable with judging people for implementing what is basically a survival mechanism. We ALL chunk at some level -- as Hazlitt says, how do we know when we have found the truth? We make decisions at some point, and those levels vary according to circumstance, etc. I think it's hubris to say that one level of chunking is that much better than another. General principles apply, to be sure -- open-mindedness is good, tolerance of ambiguity, etc. But everyone has their biases, or they wouldn't be able to function.

I call for the immediate removal of all who refuse to tolerate the rest of us.




timber

Soze, I agree with you about the simple survival value of "chunking" - I guess the trick is to know when to de-chunk - and to know that one does it at all is the first step in that process. I guess the second step is to know how much of our "chunking" is invisible to us, because it is a culturally mediated thing.

LOL You don't tolerate them huh?

"We don't take kindly to folks who don't take kindly.."

I can feel myself disappearing up me own bum again - I wish you folks would stop it with the paradoxies, already!

I never so much as use the word "paradox".

if it walks like a dox, talks like a dox, looks like a dox and there's two of them, its a paradox.

Yuppies! That it be! heeee heeee

paradoxies are better than orthodoxies

Well, yes, they ARE more fun - no?

yes. and they keep you on your toes, reaching for who knows what

Phoenix, you are right, it is incumbent upon us to know as much as we can. Of course, we still have the problem of trying to sort out the value of the things we think we know. Alas, life is so terribly complicated.

Soz, I agree with you that it is good to argue to reach understanding. Much more rewarding than arguing with the thought of converting an antagonist, and failing, which is what happens in all but an infinitesimal number of cases. I have argued this point at length on Abuzz, and to a more limited extent here.

What good is a single dox? They only work in pairs; that's how they got the name!



timber