In the current climate of political activity, something foundational occurred to me. We hear all of the rhetoric, the debates, the attacks and justifications, and it seems like nothing is ever accomplished. There are those who support Trump and those who despise him. There are those who support Sanders and those who decry him as a borderline communist. And then there are all of the minority groups and third party candidates. The problem with all of this (and usually unnoticed) is that of foundational beliefs.
Those who support Sanders do so because they believe that he will bring about good change for the nation. Why they hold their particular beliefs is really irrelevant. The point is, they support him because they agree with him. The Trump supporters are no different, as well as all the other candidates and their supporters.
When these candidates or their supporters discuss, debate or argue, they typically speak past one another because their foundational beliefs about right and wrong and the rules and responsibilities of the federal government are diametrically opposed.
On an interesting side note, every candidate has positive aspects to them. No one is ever completely wrong. But we pick out and attack those things we oppose. But these attacks are based upon foundational beliefs. To call Trump a total loser is simple ridiculous. The man is a remarkable business man. But that might not be important to you if you believe that financial gain and material success are relatively unimportant. To discuss any particular topic with someone when your personal, foundational beliefs are different than your opponent will only dead end, unless those foundational beliefs are recognized, understood and addressed.
My point is this: you cannot successfully debate or progress in anything unless that discussion starts from some common ground. To neglect this necessity results in many words but no success.
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Things political
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I posted this before but Blogspot appears to have eaten it, will try again. I was reading some scientific research that indicates people on either side of the political spectrum will absorb the same information but process it with different regions of the brain. IE, the amygdala, or the cingulate cortex, etc. This may shed some light on why people of comparable intelligence & education may view a particular topic so vastly differently from each other - we're all speaking English, yet may as well be speaking different languages. Common ground is presumably hard to come by when you are not working with common thought processes. This discovery has largely cured me of engaging in time-wasting debate with people, as the worst-crafted argument in favor of their preferred candidate carries as much weight as the best, and the most scathing argument against their preferred candidate carries no more weight than the most inept and spurious slight - people filter it by what they are neurologically hardwired to accept or reject.
ReplyDeleteThe flip side of that is, those who agree with whatever I may champion or promulgate are not necessarily doing so because of the strength of my argument, but because they are neurologically hardwired as I am, which is less than cerebrally gratifying because they would agree just as vehemently if I had made some simplistic affirmation of their preconceptions.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052970