About Differences of Opinion ...
If what I suggested in A World That Fixes Itself is so, then perhaps God doesn't want us to fight against "what is" all that hard, despite the exhortation of all our theologies to resist evil. Evil: that's what we call other people's characters, beliefs, and acts which we despise — which usually happens when we are are afraid of them.
I use the phrase "what is" in the way that this web page does when it says:
The first step in finding any peace, on either an individual or social basis, is the loving acceptance of "what is." Our diversity must be accepted, not denied or attacked. There can never be peace without acceptance of "what is." All war, all battle, all human conflict is our resistance to the way things actually are. We continually fight against "what is," and the battle continually fails.
"The way things actually are" is something that is hard to know, though. One of the things I would like to know with respect to "the way things actually are" is the answer to this question: What accounts for the bitter differences of opinion which divide us these days on matters of religion, politics, science, morality, and just about everything else under the sun?
For the facts behind the facts are facts, too, and thus an integral part of "what is." What are the facts that determine why one person loves, say, Darwin's theory of evolution while another loathes it?
I Googled the phrase "differences of opinion" to see if I could come up with some answers ... and I found the web page cited above near the top of the hit list I got back. The page seems to say, rather mystically, that the secret to happiness is to rise above differences of opinion.
One interesting aspect of my question concerning differences of opinion is why people are so much more locked in to their worldviews today than they were a few decades ago.
On every substantive question, there seems to be a "left" view (for instance, the notion that Darwin was correct about directionless evolution occurring by means of natural selection alone, with no help from God) and a "right" view (that Darwin was wrong, and God created all species directly). Sometimes there are also "middle" views (such as mine that self-organizational system dynamics yield novel-yet-expectable outcomes that are then culled by natural selection, making for a trendline of evolutionary "progress" which Darwin's theory alone cannot explain).
But "middle" views like mine get very little airtime nowadays, as the right and the left slug it out. So moderates such as myself often find themselves simply having to choose a side. Accordingly, there are fewer and fewer habitual moderates in the world, and the battle lines between right and left turn anything but porous. Nuanced debate becomes meaningless, in that almost everyone chooses one side or the other on each new controversy nearly right away, never budging after that.
That doesn't mean beliefs are uniform across all topics among those who (say) support President Bush on whatever controversy may arise, or among those who consistently oppose him.
For instance, deep fault lines among those on the political right occasionally do show up, as happened with Bush's recent aborted nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. There are religious conservatives, economic conservatives, cultural conservatives, "neo-conservatives," and a gaggle of other rightist sects.
On the left, things are apt to get yet more confusing, since there are an approximately infinite number of ways in which "progress" may potentially be accomplished.
So at one level, we as a people are all over the map, opinion-wise. But at another level, we all rather tamely sort out into two opposed mentalities: red-state and blue-state.
It was not always thus. For instance, when I was coming of age in the late 1960s, there were at least three principal opinion groups vis-à-vis the Vietnam war and the battle against international Soviet-style communism which underlay it. Conservatives generally supported the war, even if they thought the liberal hawks like Robert McNamara who were masterminding it way too fuzzy-headed in their "limited war" strategies. Then there were the liberal doves, the anti-war protesters and their semi-official spokespersons. Dr. Spock, whose book on Baby and Child Care had shaped my generation, was one of these.
When Senator Robert F. Kennedy switched in 1968 from supporting Defense Secretary McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson in their war goals to speaking out as a liberal dove, it was big news. It was possible for this to happen in part because there weren't precisely two major opinion groups with the equivalent of the Great Wall of China separating them.
Having more than two principal opinion groups doesn't happen today; nor does the Kennedyesque switching of sides on the part of important opinion leaders.
I'd like to know what makes for our entrenched red-state vs. blue-state mentality. Given that both mentalities can be nicely rationalized via standard, if rather shopworn, arguments, what is the decider, for each particular one of us, on matters of political or cultural controversy? How, in the inner councils of our mind, does that decider work?
What keeps us anchored in our respective red-state/blue-state mentalities, so that how we feel about, say, homosexuals marrying one another correlates closely with how we feel about, say, Darwin's theory?
Even though there are plenty of discoverable fault lines among liberal blue-staters and plenty more among conservative red-staters, what nonetheless holds the two groups together in such reliable, durable coalition?
What keeps a lid on the viability of moderate, compromise positions today? (To give a for instance: in the political arena, currently no one wants to discuss the possibility that the President and Congress might work out a change to existing law which would give the Executive Branch the flexibility it needs to eavesdrop on suspected domestic terrorists, while safeguarding ordinary citizens' civil liberties.)
All of these questions intrigue me. But it occurs to me that they are all preceded by this single query: Why are we all so inclined to fight "what is," a battle which, as noted above, is ultimately doomed to failure?
All ideologies, among which I include the gamut of our cultural, religious, political, and moral philosophies, are prescriptions for change. Or else they are ways to resist change: conservative regimens for leaving things the way they are — given that, in the conservative view, said prescriptions presumably would bring disaster if acted on.
In short, either the world is broken and needs fixing — the liberal view — or the world is in imminent danger of foolishly adopting the very ideas that progressives suggest are needed to fix it.
Speaking personally, I admit that I spend most of my time as a dutiful "what-is fighter," seeking to "fix" things, and usually taking the liberal side. Yet I also know that my (rare) moments of true spiritual peace come when I stop mentally fighting against "what is" and see the world as a sublimely rich scenario, a barely comprehensible puzzle-process beautiful in all its aspects. History is the unrolling of a grand tapestry, I briefly recognize, in such moments. The details depicted in the tapestry are matters I need not and cannot make once-and-for-all judgments about, for or against.
I also find that a sense of gleeful detachment puts all conflicts, oppositions, antitheses — the "battles" which the grand tapestry depicts — in their rightful place. Which knight do we choose to cheer for, the red or the white? Either way, it is but a joust staged on a sunny day. Life as a Renaissance Faire: no worries, mate.
I use the phrase "what is" in the way that this web page does when it says:
The first step in finding any peace, on either an individual or social basis, is the loving acceptance of "what is." Our diversity must be accepted, not denied or attacked. There can never be peace without acceptance of "what is." All war, all battle, all human conflict is our resistance to the way things actually are. We continually fight against "what is," and the battle continually fails.
"The way things actually are" is something that is hard to know, though. One of the things I would like to know with respect to "the way things actually are" is the answer to this question: What accounts for the bitter differences of opinion which divide us these days on matters of religion, politics, science, morality, and just about everything else under the sun?
For the facts behind the facts are facts, too, and thus an integral part of "what is." What are the facts that determine why one person loves, say, Darwin's theory of evolution while another loathes it?
I Googled the phrase "differences of opinion" to see if I could come up with some answers ... and I found the web page cited above near the top of the hit list I got back. The page seems to say, rather mystically, that the secret to happiness is to rise above differences of opinion.
One interesting aspect of my question concerning differences of opinion is why people are so much more locked in to their worldviews today than they were a few decades ago.
On every substantive question, there seems to be a "left" view (for instance, the notion that Darwin was correct about directionless evolution occurring by means of natural selection alone, with no help from God) and a "right" view (that Darwin was wrong, and God created all species directly). Sometimes there are also "middle" views (such as mine that self-organizational system dynamics yield novel-yet-expectable outcomes that are then culled by natural selection, making for a trendline of evolutionary "progress" which Darwin's theory alone cannot explain).
But "middle" views like mine get very little airtime nowadays, as the right and the left slug it out. So moderates such as myself often find themselves simply having to choose a side. Accordingly, there are fewer and fewer habitual moderates in the world, and the battle lines between right and left turn anything but porous. Nuanced debate becomes meaningless, in that almost everyone chooses one side or the other on each new controversy nearly right away, never budging after that.
That doesn't mean beliefs are uniform across all topics among those who (say) support President Bush on whatever controversy may arise, or among those who consistently oppose him.
For instance, deep fault lines among those on the political right occasionally do show up, as happened with Bush's recent aborted nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. There are religious conservatives, economic conservatives, cultural conservatives, "neo-conservatives," and a gaggle of other rightist sects.
On the left, things are apt to get yet more confusing, since there are an approximately infinite number of ways in which "progress" may potentially be accomplished.
So at one level, we as a people are all over the map, opinion-wise. But at another level, we all rather tamely sort out into two opposed mentalities: red-state and blue-state.
It was not always thus. For instance, when I was coming of age in the late 1960s, there were at least three principal opinion groups vis-à-vis the Vietnam war and the battle against international Soviet-style communism which underlay it. Conservatives generally supported the war, even if they thought the liberal hawks like Robert McNamara who were masterminding it way too fuzzy-headed in their "limited war" strategies. Then there were the liberal doves, the anti-war protesters and their semi-official spokespersons. Dr. Spock, whose book on Baby and Child Care had shaped my generation, was one of these.
When Senator Robert F. Kennedy switched in 1968 from supporting Defense Secretary McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson in their war goals to speaking out as a liberal dove, it was big news. It was possible for this to happen in part because there weren't precisely two major opinion groups with the equivalent of the Great Wall of China separating them.
Having more than two principal opinion groups doesn't happen today; nor does the Kennedyesque switching of sides on the part of important opinion leaders.
I'd like to know what makes for our entrenched red-state vs. blue-state mentality. Given that both mentalities can be nicely rationalized via standard, if rather shopworn, arguments, what is the decider, for each particular one of us, on matters of political or cultural controversy? How, in the inner councils of our mind, does that decider work?
What keeps us anchored in our respective red-state/blue-state mentalities, so that how we feel about, say, homosexuals marrying one another correlates closely with how we feel about, say, Darwin's theory?
Even though there are plenty of discoverable fault lines among liberal blue-staters and plenty more among conservative red-staters, what nonetheless holds the two groups together in such reliable, durable coalition?
What keeps a lid on the viability of moderate, compromise positions today? (To give a for instance: in the political arena, currently no one wants to discuss the possibility that the President and Congress might work out a change to existing law which would give the Executive Branch the flexibility it needs to eavesdrop on suspected domestic terrorists, while safeguarding ordinary citizens' civil liberties.)
All of these questions intrigue me. But it occurs to me that they are all preceded by this single query: Why are we all so inclined to fight "what is," a battle which, as noted above, is ultimately doomed to failure?
All ideologies, among which I include the gamut of our cultural, religious, political, and moral philosophies, are prescriptions for change. Or else they are ways to resist change: conservative regimens for leaving things the way they are — given that, in the conservative view, said prescriptions presumably would bring disaster if acted on.
In short, either the world is broken and needs fixing — the liberal view — or the world is in imminent danger of foolishly adopting the very ideas that progressives suggest are needed to fix it.
Speaking personally, I admit that I spend most of my time as a dutiful "what-is fighter," seeking to "fix" things, and usually taking the liberal side. Yet I also know that my (rare) moments of true spiritual peace come when I stop mentally fighting against "what is" and see the world as a sublimely rich scenario, a barely comprehensible puzzle-process beautiful in all its aspects. History is the unrolling of a grand tapestry, I briefly recognize, in such moments. The details depicted in the tapestry are matters I need not and cannot make once-and-for-all judgments about, for or against.
I also find that a sense of gleeful detachment puts all conflicts, oppositions, antitheses — the "battles" which the grand tapestry depicts — in their rightful place. Which knight do we choose to cheer for, the red or the white? Either way, it is but a joust staged on a sunny day. Life as a Renaissance Faire: no worries, mate.
posted by eric at 11:10 AM
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