Moose, Bourbon, Tim, Ken, and I talked late into the night about various things. It's really hard to summarize, or even remember, most of these things now. But major topics included political correctness, and the denial of truth that our culture seems to be burying its collective head in.
So, the general idea is that Policital Correctness is built around the idea that nobody should offend anybody else. The fact that this is impossible does not seem to bother the Powers That Be, since denial of reality is a major portion of how this all works.
The surest way to offend someone, it seems is to claim that you know the Truth, and that someone else, whose opinion is out of sync with this Reality, is therefore wrong. Telling someone that they are wrong is a big no-no. Claiming that you know the truth on any matter is therefore also wrong. Accepting multiple mutually-exclusive truths, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable. This is called "tolerance" rather than the more correct "self delusion" or "logical fallacy", because either of those would be judgemental, and therefore intolerant.
While it seems that any intelligent person you speak to will deplore this intellectual dishonesty, Moose made the interesting observation that they will only deplore it when it refers to issues on which they don't have a firm unbending opinion ... I mean, know the Truth. So it is very possible that I am practicing exactly the same kind if dishonesty that I am deploring.
The other thing that came up in this context was the idea of authority. Because we cannot know everything, we need to accept the idea that someone is an authority on a particular topic. On #apache yesterday, I told someone that they were wrong about something, and he called me politically incorrect - which, in part, started this train of thought. In this technical matter, which has a clear and indisputable right answer, I was supposed to accept his wrong answer, in tolerance, and not make him feel marginalized for holding a different opinion. This is hogwash. He was wrong, and I was right. But political correctness, which rejects the ideas of wrong and right, also rejects the idea that I could be an authority on the matter, and that he has to accept what I say on the matter, because of my authority.
I was going to write about the idea of denial and amnesia, also, but I'll have to get back to that when I have more time to collect my thoughts.
Posted by rbowen at May 16, 2003 11:10 AM | TrackBackthere is a semantic difference here. you are using truth to represent absolute truth. postmodernism, the prevailing wind at the moment, rejects that premise. there is relative truth. given that your world is different from my world, 'truth' can appear mutually exclusive and contradictory.
Posted by: sungo on May 16, 2003 01:23 PMI'm sorry, when people say stuff like, "your world is different from my world" makes me want to ask what planet they are from. I understand that people have different circumstances in their lives, but we all live in the same world. On the same note, Truth is Truth, it is not relative. People have different opinions, ideas and beliefs. And while truth may 'appear mutually exclusive and contradictory', because we see it through the filter of our own baggage, truth is not subject to our whims.
Posted by: Bishop on May 16, 2003 08:29 PMYes, I believe that there is a semantic difference - but I believe it is only a semantic difference. Some people like to play these word games. That's the denial I'm talking about.
It is very clear to me that people experience reality differently. Anyone who says differently has never read the first four books of the New Testament, or, for that matter, been married. That's not the same as having different realities.
It might be very convenient to think that people "have different realities," since this could frequently be used as an excuse for miscommunication. And there are many times when I'm forced to wonder if other people might just be living in a different reality, otherwise how could they possibly perceive things the way that they do. But while the Ivory Tower philosophers might claim this sort of thing, I expect that even they don't insist on their particular reality when they are pulled over by the cop that says they were going 75 in a 55 zone. And this is what I refer to as intellectual dishonesty - folks that expound theories that don't mesh with ... um ... reality. Of course, perhaps they are in a different reality.
Posted by: DrBacchus on May 19, 2003 06:28 AMThis may be way off the line of thinking that you are followong here, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway. Different realities? No. Different world views? Maybe. Having a different world view can often hinder communication. Take us for instance. ;-)
Posted by: Bishop on May 19, 2003 07:53 AM