The Implicit Problem with Conversing
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October 27, 2018
Listen to politicians answering the media, professional
managers and athletes responding to beat sports reporters, college presidents
and department heads explaining poor student retention and academic performance,
then consider ourselves in conversation with each other.
What do we have in common? We find ourselves talking past each other. We answer a question without answering it going on some tangent, talking about a different subject while believing we are talking about the same thing.
This is not new.
The idiomatic allusion to interaction was on display in a conversation
between Thrasymachus and Socrates on the subject of “justice” in Plato’s
Republic. If you read the dialogue, you
will see that neither man addressed any of the issues raised by the other. Two different concepts in the exchange need not have been disputed but are confused, however, as the two participants become carried away with the idea of what is strong (and weak) in terms of justice.
This fallacy occurred to me when comparing M's response a Klaus dictum, stating her belief in God and in the authority of the Bible, quoting it for confirmation, then
leveling the charge that Klaus “must have an inferiority complex.” This was the exchange:
Klaus writes:
Belief
in a God or not makes humans feel more significant since the universe is so
large and the earth is infinitely small speck in comparison. We want to feel special which we are not and
thinking that a God made humans makes many feel less insignificant.
My response:
Being
neither a scholar nor a theologian, I hesitate to even offer a layman’s views
of how I perceive certain issues . . . The author(s) of Ecclesiastes 1: 1-18 said
it all. In reality, what has really
changed except for ourselves, who are only what we THINK we are. Either Klaus has an inferiority complex or I
am an egotist, but never felt insignificant and I like me.
Klaus again:
There are still many people on this earth who believe the biblical story of how it all began as factual. They think the universe is only a little over 6,000 years old. I don’t care if they believe that, but some of these people are obsessed with making everyone on the planet believe that.
There are Christians who are that way and currently Muslims who are also determined that we all think as they do. My comment about people still determined to believe in a god has to do with the fact that they cannot accept the reality of the universe, the five extinctions that happened on this planet and the mystery about how it all came about.
So they believe that a god created them which I assume makes them feel special. We are not special any more than all the living things that existed before us. As I said before that does not bother me, but the turmoil they want to create because they can’t stand anyone not believing as they do which indicate that they are insecure.
My Response:
Yuval Noah Harari covers in nearly a thousand pages the fact that we are an animal and have been around since Pleistocene Epoch or about 2.5 million years with the last period of extinction, the fifth, occurring some 66 million years ago and called the “Cretaceous Period.”
The disappearance of the dinosaurs and the emergence of Homo Sapiens is still at the conjecture stage despite all the results, but has little to do with this exchange.
Ecclesiastes was written between 450 – 200 Before the Christian Era (BCE), which in terms of Homo erectus (man standing upright and walking) is only an instant in the history of the species, Homo Sapiens.
So, M and Klaus are talking past each other.
Now, the question of our being “significant” or “insignificant” has less to do with these data other than the fact that our Christian culture tells us we are special, and our American culture tells us we are “exceptional," which are subjective premises and have little to do with the indisputable fact that we are an animal like all other animals, and should treat other animals as we would expect our own species to be treated.
Klaus has a problem with religion and belief in God, which we know because he protests too much, while implicit in his rationale as is true in M’s is the duality of belief/disbelief in the soul. Blame Plato.
Ecclesiastes was written between 450 – 200 Before the Christian Era (BCE), which in terms of Homo erectus (man standing upright and walking) is only an instant in the history of the species, Homo Sapiens.
So, M and Klaus are talking past each other.
Now, the question of our being “significant” or “insignificant” has less to do with these data other than the fact that our Christian culture tells us we are special, and our American culture tells us we are “exceptional," which are subjective premises and have little to do with the indisputable fact that we are an animal like all other animals, and should treat other animals as we would expect our own species to be treated.
Klaus has a problem with religion and belief in God, which we know because he protests too much, while implicit in his rationale as is true in M’s is the duality of belief/disbelief in the soul. Blame Plato.
Plato divided the soul into three parts: “reason,” “spirit” and “appetite.” The latter he called “thymos,” or what motivates the best and worst in us. “Thymos” is a desire for a desire making it the psychological seat of the desire for recognition as well as the psychological origin of political action. Remember, St. Paul was Greek and schooled in Plato and Socratic thought.
Our idiosyncratic nature is such that:
We all love ourselves; we are born egotists, and since our egos are fragile, we will do about anything to protect them. This makes meaningful exchange difficult.
We are all more interested in ourselves than in anyone else in the world. We attempt to turn the conversation around to what we think, feel and value. Failing that, we become bored, stop listening, or excuse ourselves from the conversation.
Every person you meet wants to feel important. Treat people with respect, whatever their station in life, and it will be returned tenfold. Be condescending and they will see you as an adversary; show them that you care, and the balance falls in your direction.
We each crave the approval of others, so that we may in turn approve of ourselves. The hardest person in the world to make friends with is ourselves. Everyone suffers this handicap, and everyone is grateful when relieved of this by complimenting them in some manner. Thus we arouse attributes of their positive side. The barriers of suspicion vanish making productive conversation possible.
Western Civilization was built on the "thymos" of this imaginative and subjective foundation, mainly by the Roman Catholic Church up through the early 16th century and then subsequently by the Protestant Reformation with the Industrial Revolution, Scientific Revolution and now the Technology Revolution to follow up to our day.
Klaus doesn’t say anything that cannot be verified historically, and M is right that she has been energized by her religion, which has given her a sense of self-worth and dignity, what Plato would say is her “thymos.” But, of course, this is buried in the exchange with them talking past each other.
PS Francis Fukuyama explores Plato's thymos in some detail in "The End of History and The Last Man" (1992), as does Yuval Noah Harari in "Homo Sapiens" (2015) and "Homo Deus" (2017).
Our idiosyncratic nature is such that:
We all love ourselves; we are born egotists, and since our egos are fragile, we will do about anything to protect them. This makes meaningful exchange difficult.
We are all more interested in ourselves than in anyone else in the world. We attempt to turn the conversation around to what we think, feel and value. Failing that, we become bored, stop listening, or excuse ourselves from the conversation.
Every person you meet wants to feel important. Treat people with respect, whatever their station in life, and it will be returned tenfold. Be condescending and they will see you as an adversary; show them that you care, and the balance falls in your direction.
We each crave the approval of others, so that we may in turn approve of ourselves. The hardest person in the world to make friends with is ourselves. Everyone suffers this handicap, and everyone is grateful when relieved of this by complimenting them in some manner. Thus we arouse attributes of their positive side. The barriers of suspicion vanish making productive conversation possible.
Western Civilization was built on the "thymos" of this imaginative and subjective foundation, mainly by the Roman Catholic Church up through the early 16th century and then subsequently by the Protestant Reformation with the Industrial Revolution, Scientific Revolution and now the Technology Revolution to follow up to our day.
Klaus doesn’t say anything that cannot be verified historically, and M is right that she has been energized by her religion, which has given her a sense of self-worth and dignity, what Plato would say is her “thymos.” But, of course, this is buried in the exchange with them talking past each other.
PS Francis Fukuyama explores Plato's thymos in some detail in "The End of History and The Last Man" (1992), as does Yuval Noah Harari in "Homo Sapiens" (2015) and "Homo Deus" (2017).
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