Defending the Opposite ? Duality of the Mind.

[Deleted]

Is the due course of my life, daily or otherwise, I seem to land up having to defend positions and views that I may not personally hold dear to myself. Yet I am neither a lawyer, nor a descartesian philosopher.

No priest nor preacher allows the doubters, the faithful shall follow. I had no love for them; I do not admire the contrarians either. Yet !!!

I am having doubts about the ban on veils by France and the long standing one in the academic portals of learning in Turkey.

Against intrusive body scans by border patrols, Athletic scholarships for functionally illiterate football players and the no gifts rule. In defense of bad sex,no sex. High costs of meat production and deep subsidies to agro producers. Against free trade.

Would you ever take positions as such ? In the end it make one believe in neither black nor white, but a variant of grey. The continuum in which we fall is ever shifting.

[rattler]

Sept 30, 2010 11:17:19 GMT -5 @nycank said:

Is the due course of my life, daily or otherwise, I seem to land up having to defend positions and views that I may not personally hold dear to myself. Yet I am neither a lawyer, nor a descartesian philosopher.

No priest nor preacher allows the doubters, the faithful shall follow. I had no love for them; I do not admire the contrarians either. Yet !!!

I am having doubts about the ban on veils by France and the long standing one in the academic portals of learning in Turkey.

Against intrusive body scans by border patrols, Athletic scholarships for functionally illiterate football players and the no gifts rule. In defense of bad sex,no sex. High costs of meat production and deep subsidies to agro producers. Against free trade.

Would you ever take positions as such ? In the end it make one believe in neither black nor white, but a variant of grey. The continuum in which we fall is ever shifting.

My friend, that is exactly the world and life is like: No black and white, shades of various greys, and if you do not doubt but have firm convictions you might well be one of the paranoid fanatical fools who find the world so easy to explain in a few words.

Having doubts about everything, including your own convictions, is the only way to proceed in knowledge and understanding, though I agree it is hard to forward this idea to others, too many of us just want the world to be simple an easily explained:

Why do we believe in a god, when more or less any serioous investigation shows that the probability of one existing is rather slim?

My idea is that it started on analyzing the black-and-white screen in the long past: Take for example a thunderstorm 10.000 yrs ago, a flash strikes one hut in the village, the others are not affected. Not really understanding about thunderstorms our ancestors might have been tempted to look for the "natural"(easy) explanation, like "The guy (family) whos hut got struck by the lightning flash must have done/not done something that rewarded him with this harsh punishment". Maybe he got up one hour later every day than the others (conclusion "all need to get up early to not get struck by lightning"), he wore red clothes instead of the grey ones the others wore (conclusion:"wearing red clothes attracts lightning")?

From this or similar kinds of views it seems easy to assume a "lightening flash throwing god" who punishes e.g. people wearing red clothes on wednesdays between mid day and sundown...

Problem is, we today also tend to do the same thing, on another level, of cause: We still want to believe (maybe this is in our genes, or - my theory - it is lack of education -) that the world is easy to explain, there are forces of evil versus forces of good (one idea) or there are sinister multinational firms that would do everything to make a buck and if the planet went haywire, or it is the muslims, or the jews, or the people with long hair, or the permissive dems, or whatever, etc., as long as we can pack it inot one coherent sentence: The Universe, explained.

Some of our better thinkers (and thinking is, I am afraid, a kind of hard work really, even if we all tend to believe we are thinking all the time without effort, first step to be wrong) have made some great quotes about that doubting that makes us weak and strong at the same time:

My favorite, by our ex Chancelor Helmut Schmidt (attributed to origin from Bertrand Russel):"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and that the wise people are so full of doubts."

Peter Ustinov:"Who is not constantly doubting must be insane"

Stanislaw I. Leszynski:"To believe something with certainty you have to permanently doubt"

Henry Thomas Buckle:"First doubt, then investigate, then discover"

Galileo:"Doubt is the mother of invention"

Sir Francis Bacon:"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."

John Burroughs:"It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative."

FWIW,

Rattler

[deyana]

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and that the wise people are so full of doubts."

Peter Ustinov:"Who is not constantly doubting must be insane"

Stanislaw I. Leszynski:"To believe something with certainty you have to permanently doubt"

Henry Thomas Buckle:"First doubt, then investigate, then discover"

Galileo:"Doubt is the mother of invention"

Sir Francis Bacon:"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."

John Burroughs:"It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative."

Wise quotes indeed. I doubt all the time. I question all the time. I re-discover many times over. I think, I work it over in my mind, and then I question myself again. I try and find a solution, an end, a better way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I try.

I'm the kind of person that see things more as black or white, right or wrong. I don't like having gray areas. There are some gray areas for sure, but for me, not many. My morals, my way of thinking have been set for a long time, I doubt it will change. I'm more likely to defend someone who touches my heart, then for any other reason. Could they be in the wrong? sure. But that's not the reason I defend of befriend people, there has to be a deeper meaning...

I find myself, over and over again defending and taking the side of the underdog, I do it without thinking, it's very, very ingrained in me. I can't stand snobs, bigots, lairs, cowards and hypocrites. And I would never take their side in any way or defend them ever, simply because I find these traits in people very off putting.

[Deleted]

Oct 1, 2010 11:42:58 GMT -5 deyana said:

I find myself, over and over again defending and taking the side of the underdog, I do it without thinking, it's very, very ingrained in me. I can't stand snobs, bigots, lairs, cowards and hypocrites. And I would never take their side in any way or defend them ever, simply because I find these traits in people very off putting.

Playing the devil's advocate, let's tease out some contemporary social problems.

e.g People who advocate, rather vociferously, for right to life and right of the unborn child, and sanctity of God's creation, also tend to be advocates of Capital punishment, and war as a solution to resolving historical disputes.

People who are strong believers of woman's right to abortion, and also loath to allow dessent amongst their tribe to alternative viewpoints.

[Deleted]

I'm all for women and their right to have an abortion. I don't quite get the conflict some might have with others' alternative view points? I don't think one thing has much to do with the other. People just have different points of view, depending on their own morals and mind sets..

[Deleted]

Oct 2, 2010 23:06:07 GMT -5 @misspatty said:

I'm all for women and their right to have an abortion. I don't quite get the conflict some might have with others' alternative view points? I don't think one thing has much to do with the other. People just have different points of view, depending on their own morals and mind sets..

The topic is about duality and conflicts. In the "right to choose" pedagogy, certain people hold the absolutist position of a "woman" defined as gender, rather an individual with reproductive rights. There are bounds to that choice according to many within that framework.

The woman's right to choose might at times be overridden 1) health care provider 2) parents in case of a minor as two simplistic examples. Duality comes when someone rejects even a variance of, or negation of the nuances of choice.

Anyways, I think people have conflicts, deeper your beliefs and stronger you hold on to them, the more difficult it becomes to re-concile with contrarian evidence.

[deyana]

Anyways, I think people have conflicts, deeper your beliefs and stronger you hold on to them, the more difficult it becomes to re-concile with contrarian evidence.

True. And harder it is to see with clarity, and so come to the right conclusion, at least for the individual.