From: | Antonio Rossin <rossin(at)tin.it> |
---|---|
Date: | Tue, 17 May 2005 03:49:31 +0200 |
Subject: | Re: lozenge... |
If people are ready for some dialog, I'd welcome some comments
on my WikiPage, which has sitting in the corner ignored...
[HarmonizationAndLocalism]
Friends,
Those of us who have "something to say", and I include
myself, have lots of outlets for our ideas these days.
Besides the usual magazines and books, by which means
we can publish, we can construct websites, create or join
online forums, etc. There are many ways for us to express
ourselves, and get "the word out" to significant audiences.
What we tend to do, and again I include myself, is to "hone
our message", become more persuasive, more educated,
and proclaim our insights to audiences that more or less
agree with us.
I happened to ask myself, in an idle moment, regarding
these traits of ours, "What game are we playing?".
We must admit, at least I admit it to myself, that we
are playing the game of "faction building". That is, we
are trying to "spread the word" to a hopefully increasing
circle of readers, and eventually we hope that everyone
will "see things clearly", wake up, and things will change.
But the reality, perhaps sad, is that people in a pluralistic
society never settle on one viewpoint.
They always divide
themselves into factions. Partly this is due to upbringing,
partly religion, partly psychology and personality types,
partly government propaganda - but whatever it is, history
shows us that people are never going to wake up, en mass,
to a particular perspective on the truth. The only times this
has happened have been under coercive theocratic regimes,
and I don't think that's what any of us are after.
In today's world,
it is the fundamentalists, both Christian and Muslim, who
are winning the game of "faction building", if anyone is -
certainly it isn't liberals and progressives.
The thought I would like to share - and I'm not sure how
many ears this will be useful to - is that we consider a
different approach. And again I admit that for me this
advice will be as difficult to act on as for anyone. The
approach I am referring to is this: instead of "giving out"
(a colorful Irish expression for "expressing") our
viewpoints to "the choir", why don't we seek out people
we disagree with and listen to them?
Shouting hasn't converted them; they don't subscribe
to your email list, and they aren't going to agree with
your "giving out". You know; you've tried. Why not
try to find out where they're really coming from?
Why not try to understand why what they believe
makes sense to them? I don't mean this as prying,
to better argue against them, but rather as a means
to understand why everyone doesn't think the way
you do. The answer is not that they are stupid, or
that they don't care about humanity. The answer
is not even that they have different deep values. In
most cases the answer is that they perceive things
differently, or have had different life experiences.
Such things are not character defects.
And what about, if we change the current family
To the extent we pursue faction building, we are
playing into the game of adversarial politics. What
are our chances of victory, realistically, in that
rigged game? Look at the other players at the table:
not only the mainstream parties, totally corrupt, but
the mass media, the voting machines, etc. To the
extent we learn to listen to and understand our
brothers and sisters who don't agree with us, we
are undermining the game of adversarial politics.
What I am suggesting is an approach to our "audience"
based on listening rather than giving out. If we start by
giving out, our audience is limited to those who already
agree with us. If we start by listening, our audience, in
some sense, is limited only by our ability to communicate.
for whomever these words are meaningful,
rkm
http://cyberjournal.org