[FRIAM] wackos

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Dave, 

 

Forgodsake, there are seventy-two million of Them; there must be one I could talk to. 

 

I don’t think my desire to find common ground is either dishonest or insincere.  It might be misguided or naïve, in that I am inclined to imagine the other person changing, rather than myself.  I claim that the most crucial thing I need to have a useful argument with another human being is that he/she finds our disagreement an unstable state that can be stabilized by honest argument or by a mutually understood and circumscribed agreement to disagree.  

 

N

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 2:33 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] wackos

 

In a different thread, Glen wrote:

 

"what many of us purport to *want* ... common ground with which to have a discussion with the right wing wackos in our lives."

 

Although I have heard people express a desire for such conversations and questions about finding a common ground upon which to base them — I do not believe a single one of them was honest or sincere.

 

There is only one circumstance in which a 'conversation' with a wacko has any point: a professional psychiatrist seeking to mitigate the mental condition of a patient.

 

Perhaps "right wing wackos" is simply a label (RWW) for a group and not an assertion of their sanity. 

 

If RWW are an alien species, ala Martians, then conversation/dialog/exchange might be quite useful and even beneficial — the SciFi trope of "look how much we could learn from someone with such a different perspective." An alternative SciFi trope: "we can never understand each other so we must be implacable enemies and seek to annihilate each other;" is also possible. (Unfortunately, I think the second trope is far more descriptive of the majority of left-vs-right rhetoric these days.)

 

If RWW are simply an exotic human culture; conversation, dialogue, exchange; all are eminently desirable.

 

However, there are preconditions — maybe just one — the ethical principle of cultural anthropology: relativism. There are no objective criteria by which you can judge the 'correctness' the 'rightness' the 'fitness' (there is no cultural evolution theory analogous to Darwin with species) or the 'morality' among cultures. To think otherwise is ethnocentrism.

 

Ethnocentrism is perfect if your goal is to be a cultural imperialist or a missionary, but is not a foundation for constructive dialog or conversation.

 

I love and respect you all, but you seem to me to be one of the most ethnocentric (Liberal-Scientism, for want of a better label) cultures around.

 

A common saying about the role of an anthropologist: "to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange." An ethnography of the RWW would be, in my opinion, quite valuable; and, along with dropping the ethnocentrism, prerequisite to any conversation with them. You run the risk, however, that your study of the mote in the other's eye will craft a lens or a mirror that will reflect the beam in your own.

 

davew

 

 

 

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