The wonky Tree (2)
To recap and extend, then.
One. When you routinely slag off your intellectual opponents, you are buying into some tribal discourse designed to stop you leaving the village and going out and, you know, exploring stuff. You are playing it safe. You are also exhibiting a raideur mecanique which would have made old Henri Bergson chortle shamelessly.
Two. Since most people do this, to slag someone else off for doing it kind of misses the point, as well as taking you back to square one. Do not collect two hundred pounds. And to pretend that, rather than obeying a perfectly natural tribal instinct, your opponents are merely and frivolously being "stupid", is probably a bit frivolous and a bit stupid. The existence of a tribal instinct more than adequately explains how we approach our differences. Dullness is just the extra oregano.
Three. We can be very different in what we think about things, yet remarkably similar in how we react when a kitten falls onto our head from a third storey balcony. This in turn suggests that humans are not one-dimensional entities. Your ideas are not even your "identity", let alone the real you. They're just some stuff that got stuck to your shoe on the way home. Stop being so defensive about them. Remove the glasses from time to time. Some other ideas might actually prove nicer than the ones you have, and for an extra bonus, truer. Live a little.
Four. (Don't worry, I'm not aiming for 95.) If we are not one-dimensional entities, the proper thing would be to acknowledge this in discussion. In fact, if we are to advance beyond the current gridlock of mutually repellent ideologies on the Internet all snarling at each other, this has to happen. We need there to be a common civilised assumption that being wrong does not mean being wicked, or ugly, even if you think you can extrapolate some form of wickedness from someone's position in a few steps. By all means point that out to them, but don't assume they've already done the extrapolation and been satisfied with the ball of nasty you have discovered at the end of it. Either party may have missed a step. Find out.
Yes, I'm actually recommending being polite and respectful in discussions. Old fashioned yes, but demonstrably sensible for these reasons and others.
And yes, this does rule out trying to get people sacked for wearing the wrong shirt. This is what we are facing. This is the new barbarism, the one that tries to reduce people to counters on a snakes and ladders board, the one that denies the multi-layeredness of humanity and the sacredness of that residual mystery that remains in a person even after you think you've flushed out their true political awfulness and laid it triumphantly on the table. The pack hunters, the hyena cult. Being civilised necessarily rules out acting like that.
Five. It is fairly well known that our emotions didn't keep pace with our neocortical development. Admittedly, like the three primary colours or the four taste sensors, you can do a lot with combinations. I strongly suspect there are some exquisite cocktails of emotions I've never experienced, because I read about them in novels and they seem perfectly plausible in theory, but I'm buggered if I can get them to work in this dusty old laboratory. Leaving that aside, emotions are simple and explosive things on the whole, the basic ones anyway. Be careful and responsible about how you conjure them in any discussion.
Well, that wasn't it really. The point I really wanted to make was that if your ideas are one thing and your identity is something else, your emotions are a third thing, since it seems the sliders can be manipulated more or less independently. So by reducing your opponent to a spluttering, incoherent caldera of outrage you may have just won the argument, but you haven't actually proved them wrong.
Ach, I could go on, probably will at a later stage, but this is getting boring. I wanted this to be about something else, but you have to see where I am coming from first, since without the preliminary worldview, the wonky Tree won't make no sense.
I'm less interested in telling you what I think (you've noticed? good) than why I think it. I've always liked tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. I may be wrong about everything, but I am wrong for explainable reasons, and that's a start.
So, the wonky Tree.
I was going to recommend travelling light as the solution to the eternal tribal warfare of ritualized stupidity. By travelling light I mean not being too committed to anything. OK, it may be that being rich predisposes you to voting A, and being poor to B, but it's curable, else there's no hope for anyone. All the same, being somewhere in the middle has its advantages (I like the phrase "straitened circumstances": does for me. What it means is that I love playing the guitar, but haven't owned a guitar since mine was stolen six years ago. Yet I still eat, and feed my family. That's "straitened"). Being in some undefined no-man's land in the middle, I can go leftwards or rightwards on the political spectrum without raising any eyebrows, because I'm not stereotypical anything. OK, that's a plus, but it's not quite where I'm going with this.
What I really mean by travelling light is not being emotionally too attached to any of the tribes you encounter along the way. You may stay for a while with one or another, may like them or not so much, but none are "yours". As a result, you don't say anything to an imaginary ripple of inner applause from your fellow tribesmen and women. You don't fall into line, because there's nothing to fall into line with. That helps.
Against which is the natural human desire (need?) to belong.
I have it myself, but if the tribal instinct is a tree, in some of us it somehow didn't take very well. It grows, but at an angle, with shallow roots, sort of wonkily. It looks stunted.
I just assumed this was an unclassified weirdness of mine, this not belonging to a tribe and not caring too much about it, until my son was diagnosed as autistic. This has led me to wonder if I may have a little of the autist in me too. Arguably, it might explain why I'm so much more comfortable with pictures and music than with words, why I translate stuff into language much later than most people do, why the people in my dreams do more barking than talking, and why I bristle when people repeat clichés, or roll their eyes, or otherwise act like puppets... why I'm relatively (obviously not entirely) immune to social puppetry. It might explain why I like animals, and fountains, and birds, and insects, and people not so much, and why I've always dreamed of a relationship in which nothing was ever said, and everything understood. And why my preferred mode of death would be to fall into a giant mincer and be chewed instantly into formless slivers. The self-hatred is residual, fortunately, but definitely there - comes with the territory, I suppose.
One. When you routinely slag off your intellectual opponents, you are buying into some tribal discourse designed to stop you leaving the village and going out and, you know, exploring stuff. You are playing it safe. You are also exhibiting a raideur mecanique which would have made old Henri Bergson chortle shamelessly.
Two. Since most people do this, to slag someone else off for doing it kind of misses the point, as well as taking you back to square one. Do not collect two hundred pounds. And to pretend that, rather than obeying a perfectly natural tribal instinct, your opponents are merely and frivolously being "stupid", is probably a bit frivolous and a bit stupid. The existence of a tribal instinct more than adequately explains how we approach our differences. Dullness is just the extra oregano.
Three. We can be very different in what we think about things, yet remarkably similar in how we react when a kitten falls onto our head from a third storey balcony. This in turn suggests that humans are not one-dimensional entities. Your ideas are not even your "identity", let alone the real you. They're just some stuff that got stuck to your shoe on the way home. Stop being so defensive about them. Remove the glasses from time to time. Some other ideas might actually prove nicer than the ones you have, and for an extra bonus, truer. Live a little.
Four. (Don't worry, I'm not aiming for 95.) If we are not one-dimensional entities, the proper thing would be to acknowledge this in discussion. In fact, if we are to advance beyond the current gridlock of mutually repellent ideologies on the Internet all snarling at each other, this has to happen. We need there to be a common civilised assumption that being wrong does not mean being wicked, or ugly, even if you think you can extrapolate some form of wickedness from someone's position in a few steps. By all means point that out to them, but don't assume they've already done the extrapolation and been satisfied with the ball of nasty you have discovered at the end of it. Either party may have missed a step. Find out.
Yes, I'm actually recommending being polite and respectful in discussions. Old fashioned yes, but demonstrably sensible for these reasons and others.
And yes, this does rule out trying to get people sacked for wearing the wrong shirt. This is what we are facing. This is the new barbarism, the one that tries to reduce people to counters on a snakes and ladders board, the one that denies the multi-layeredness of humanity and the sacredness of that residual mystery that remains in a person even after you think you've flushed out their true political awfulness and laid it triumphantly on the table. The pack hunters, the hyena cult. Being civilised necessarily rules out acting like that.
Five. It is fairly well known that our emotions didn't keep pace with our neocortical development. Admittedly, like the three primary colours or the four taste sensors, you can do a lot with combinations. I strongly suspect there are some exquisite cocktails of emotions I've never experienced, because I read about them in novels and they seem perfectly plausible in theory, but I'm buggered if I can get them to work in this dusty old laboratory. Leaving that aside, emotions are simple and explosive things on the whole, the basic ones anyway. Be careful and responsible about how you conjure them in any discussion.
Well, that wasn't it really. The point I really wanted to make was that if your ideas are one thing and your identity is something else, your emotions are a third thing, since it seems the sliders can be manipulated more or less independently. So by reducing your opponent to a spluttering, incoherent caldera of outrage you may have just won the argument, but you haven't actually proved them wrong.
Ach, I could go on, probably will at a later stage, but this is getting boring. I wanted this to be about something else, but you have to see where I am coming from first, since without the preliminary worldview, the wonky Tree won't make no sense.
I'm less interested in telling you what I think (you've noticed? good) than why I think it. I've always liked tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. I may be wrong about everything, but I am wrong for explainable reasons, and that's a start.
So, the wonky Tree.
I was going to recommend travelling light as the solution to the eternal tribal warfare of ritualized stupidity. By travelling light I mean not being too committed to anything. OK, it may be that being rich predisposes you to voting A, and being poor to B, but it's curable, else there's no hope for anyone. All the same, being somewhere in the middle has its advantages (I like the phrase "straitened circumstances": does for me. What it means is that I love playing the guitar, but haven't owned a guitar since mine was stolen six years ago. Yet I still eat, and feed my family. That's "straitened"). Being in some undefined no-man's land in the middle, I can go leftwards or rightwards on the political spectrum without raising any eyebrows, because I'm not stereotypical anything. OK, that's a plus, but it's not quite where I'm going with this.
What I really mean by travelling light is not being emotionally too attached to any of the tribes you encounter along the way. You may stay for a while with one or another, may like them or not so much, but none are "yours". As a result, you don't say anything to an imaginary ripple of inner applause from your fellow tribesmen and women. You don't fall into line, because there's nothing to fall into line with. That helps.
Against which is the natural human desire (need?) to belong.
I have it myself, but if the tribal instinct is a tree, in some of us it somehow didn't take very well. It grows, but at an angle, with shallow roots, sort of wonkily. It looks stunted.
I just assumed this was an unclassified weirdness of mine, this not belonging to a tribe and not caring too much about it, until my son was diagnosed as autistic. This has led me to wonder if I may have a little of the autist in me too. Arguably, it might explain why I'm so much more comfortable with pictures and music than with words, why I translate stuff into language much later than most people do, why the people in my dreams do more barking than talking, and why I bristle when people repeat clichés, or roll their eyes, or otherwise act like puppets... why I'm relatively (obviously not entirely) immune to social puppetry. It might explain why I like animals, and fountains, and birds, and insects, and people not so much, and why I've always dreamed of a relationship in which nothing was ever said, and everything understood. And why my preferred mode of death would be to fall into a giant mincer and be chewed instantly into formless slivers. The self-hatred is residual, fortunately, but definitely there - comes with the territory, I suppose.
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