Re: Mote, Beam, Pot, Kettle... (was Re: Reintroducing myself.)

In article <4782180D.4010405@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Sea Wasp <seawaspObvious@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Or perhaps that should be Beam, Beam, Kettle, Kettle, so as to not
assign anyone to any particular category. In any case...

Alma Hromic Deckert wrote:
On Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:33:56 -0800, David Friedman
<ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


In article <LzlkMZLVHRgHFwVk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Helen Hall <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Agree to disagree", the way I use it means
stating concisely one's opposing view but then (because one realises
that trying to argue is both pointless and/or inappropriate in the
circumstances) adding the comment, "...so we'll just have to agree to
disagree." Which means "My mind is made up, I see your mind is made up,
arguing about it will just cause bad feeling so lets get back onto
common ground asap and consider the matter done with."

Perhaps part of the problem is that that sounds awfully close, to my
ear, to "my mind is made up; don't confuse me with facts." In other
words, the underlying implication I hear is either that there isn't any
rational basis for anyone's views, so no point in giving reasons for
them--or, alternatively, "you are such an unreasonable person that
there's no point trying to discuss things with you." The first seem to
me a dreadful view of the world, the second a thinly veiled insult.

There's another viewpoint, namely that individuals develop by
learning what their lives have teach them, and often people reject
concepts presented in argument because those concepts fall too
far outside their personal sense of what is "real" and "true"
according to their experience so far. This doesn't necessarily
mean that "reality" and "truth" are entirely subjective concepts,
but it does mean that when you tell someone that what her life
has taught her is nonsense/bull***/baloney/foolish and obvious
error, you can easily come across as telling her that her *her life
experience itself" is nonsense/etc.; or, worse yet, that she is such
a dunce that she understands her own life experience less well
than *you* understand it, from outside (and, for the most part,
ignorance) of it. Talk about *insulting*!

People's experience changes, and minds change, and in the normal
run of things "winning" or "losing" an argument on the usenet will
hardly change the world in any immediate and significant way; it
just ain't that important to come out "on top" (usually by having
the last word as many times as it takes to have the really *last* word,
regardless of whether anyone is actually listening let alone being
suddenly enlightened by yet another restatement of one's position).
As I put a high premium on making some kind of minimally
productive use of my time (you can tell by the amount of it that I
manage to spend noodling around on lists like this, wry emotocon
here), I would rather just acknowledge that perceptions can differ
so much and so firmly that further argument will apparently get us
nowhere at least for the time being, so how about moving on? It's
not necessarily a good thing to keep chewing doggedly away at
some divisive topic until in our enthusiasm we end up biting each
other til blood flows.

I'll take "agree to disagree" on that basis. Which reminds me, I've
been meaning to get back to an old friend of mine who tells me
she's been expanding her circle of acquaintances to include all
sorts of folks she formerly would have yelled at or dismissed out
of hand, working on the basis of something she calls "congenial
dissent". I like the sound of that, and if it enables her (a militant
anti-heterosexual lesbian, in former incarnations) to converse
civilly about serious matters with mormons and proponents of
various other orthodoxies, that sounds interesting to me.

SMC
.