Re: noodling request: Faustian bargains

Crowfoot <pagemail@xxxxxxxx> wrote (re the argumentative disputing style
David advocates):

Been there, done that, not eager to return. The world will go
its way regardless of my opinions in any case, nor is it my main
job to force the world in this direction or that.

For me, other worldviews - even ones that I can only 'agree to disagree'
with, _enhance_ mine - by building, if you want, an option-space of all
the possible approaches to a topic, filled with experiences (which,
again, I choose to take at face value if they come from people I trust;
I do not ask to see proof or hear collaborating evidence about the
events in my friends' lives) ; and those other opinions + the events
that influenced them help me to locate _my_ position - which is right
for me, and might change (or not) in the course of such a conversation.

Quite often it is amended or clarified by the end of it. I will never
again say 'putting bread in a plastic bag is a stupid thing as it will
go moldy almost immediately', I will add an 'if you live in a fairly
(but not excessively) humid and moderately cool climate - in California
or Florida you will need to manage your bread differently.'

And these conversations fulfill three functions: the first is
interaction with people I care about (aks 'having a life'); the second
is to enhance my experience of the world - by showing me 'how the other
half lives' and allowing me to share any number of experiences I could
not have by myself, and the third is to allow me to be a better writer
_because_ I am taken out of my experience and the narrowness of the
world with which I interact. This does not mean that I shall write
<participant> into a book, merely that I have a much wider range of
interactions-with-the-world and ways-to-react-to-the-world than before.

Yesterday I heard an interview with an actress who held an interview in
a bar, and on the next table, a man took a gun out of a bag and laid it
on the table, which rendered a number of teenagers nervous. (I can
understand that nervousness. I once was at an airport where someone
opened a padded briefcase which contained what appeared to be the parts
of a gun; and I vividly remember the 'oh, shit' feeling.) She evaluated
the situation - the guy was rummaging through his bag and appeared not
to want to hold up the bar or shoot indiscriminately - so she dismissed
it. _She_ had worked on films where she had to handle and shoot guns, so
she approached it from a completely different perspective, and it's that
shift of 'where danger lies' that I'm gonna use at some point, not the
person or the incident.

I find it perfectly easy to see two opposing sides of a heated debate -
should horses, for instance, be habitually tied to something they can
break away from? - to understand where either side is coming from, to
value the arguments on both sides, and to pick one for purely personal
reasons without wanting to discredit the other. All I want in that kind
of situation is to have my opinion put forward, my experiences accepted
for what they are, my contribution accepted (and hopefully understood)
as a valid approach. Whether the people I talk to end up taking my side
or the other side or form a more complex set of opinions (a bit like
Mornington Crescent: If you have a yard next to a busy road, choose
method A, but if you cannot guarantee that your building will withstand
a horse pulling against it, choose method B...) which is, after all,
what most of us do - we do not always have rationally defensible
patterns of action, our opinions and moods influence what we do, and we
might - while feeling not in the least uneasy about it - choose
different approaches to the same challenges in different circumstances,
declaring both to be 'our' approaches.


Catja

--
writing blog @ http://beyond-elechan.livejournal.com
.

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