promoting radical honesty
Recent experiences have led me to question whether or not we are truly an evolved, enlightened community, or whether all of these subtexts are just bragging pretention?
Generally, I am not perturbed by things that people say; because I figure that, either my friends are saying nice things that i appreciate, or my enemies are saying mean things that i can ignore.
This also reminds me of an old adage:
"The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it. If you can't top it, laugh at it. If you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved."
- John Russell Lynes, Jr.
But the only benefit from gossip is when it leads to community moderation of the original problems.
Nonetheless, I have developed a simple rule for my own conversation strategy:
when I am speaking of a person who is not in my immediate company, i will only say those things about them which I would would say to them if they were present.
i.e. I don't say things behind someone's back that I wouldn't say to their face.
After talking to a few people about how they just don't feel comfortable with confrontation, I have endeavored to develop an environment in which all people could feel comfortable venting their spleen.
I think that if people begin to practice this kind of radical honesty, that we will find that it will ultimately benefit our community -- even though it may require more initial investment of time and energy. Basically, I figure that if people have time to complain about someone, even though they don't feel comfortable talking directly to the person, they could instead take the time to make an anonymous post in this journal, and give that person the opportunity to address the concerns. I believe that we will find that issues are easily exaggerated and otherwise taken out of context, when they are not brought directly to the source of the perceived problem.
Perhaps I am an idealist; but from an anthropological perspective, I believe that the only way for a community to deal with its problems is for them to be addressed immediately, directly, fearlessly, honestly, and openly. Evidence of how well this works can be found in this essay: Subsistence Among the Orang Asli.
--
In my search for the proper forum in which to address these concerns, i found myself travelling back to Athenian Greece... to the Areopagus, The hill of Ares (Areios pagos).
Images of the Areopagus:
here and here
At the Areopagus, according to Pausanias, in the Attica section of his Description of Greece:
` ` there are unhewn stones on which stand the defendants and the prosecutors, they call The Stone of Outrage and The Stone of Ruthlessness. ' '
According to "An Introduction to Classical Athenian Democracy," by Christopher W. Blackwell:
` ` The orator Lycurgus tells his fellow Athenians that, you have, in the Council of the Areopagus, the finest model in Greece: a court so superior to others that even the men convicted in it admit that its judgements are just (Lycurg. 1.12). ' '
The Areopagus was also the place where the Apostle Paul discussed Xtianity with a crowd of curious Athenian philosophers. Perhaps some of you may be familiar with Paul's
Address to the Athenians at the Areopagus, recorded in Acts 17:22-31. By that time, the Areopagus had become a place where cultures, faiths, values and philosophies came into dialogue.
Some of you may be familiar with the Areopagus through: Areopagitica, by John Milton, which was published to defend the rights of the Free Press.
Milton's "Areopagitica" was addressed to Parliament and adopts the form of an oration, written rather than spoken, following the rules of classical rhetoric.
This essay provides some great analysis... Milton's Areopagitica and the Modern First Amendment, by Vincent Blasi:
` ` One (of the three significant ideas in Areopagitica) is that truth is strong and will prevail without the help of the censor's coercive assistance.
...
A second feature of Milton's thought ... is the claim that the endeavor of seeking to know the truth--or to put it in less grandiose terms, to improve one's understanding--has particular priority.
...
A third idea in Milton that has achieved some undeserved modern currency is that exposure to falsity is valuable to the appreciation of truth. Erroneous opinions he characterizes as "dust and cinders" that "may yet serve to polish and brighten the armory of truth." He describes how a "discreet and judicious" reader can use bad books "to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate." More than two hundred years after Milton wrote, John Stuart Mill was to build his Essay On Liberty around a secular reformulation of these notions.
I have no doubt of the validity of this line of argument. In fact, I regard as possibly the two most important pages I have ever read the passage in On Liberty in which Mill argues, from Cicero, that a person should strive to understand his opponents' ideas with greater imagination and sympathy than he devotes to knowing his own. If every advocate and every scholar would only reread those pages before entering the lists, the world would be a better place.
...
Milton's case for free expression depends in no small degree on his observation, repeated throughout the tract in a variety of figurations, that vitality is the defining quality of a political community, and that vitality cannot be maintained--stagnation will inevitably set in--if the prescriptions of Custom and Authority are allowed to go unchallenged.
...
this seems to me the crux of Areopagitica, is that without a robust commitment to free-wheeling disputation, (and) without what Jeremy Waldron has usefully termed "ethical confrontation" of the most pervasive sort, it is impossible to sustain an energetic, adaptive, vibrant society ... "I cannot praise," (Milton) says, "a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary." ' '
--
So, if anyone has anything confrontational that they would like to say to me, here and now would be an excellent place to start... by replying to this post.
And if you would appreciate the same treatment, then please feel free to make a new post; and we, as a community, will return the favor.
Generally, I am not perturbed by things that people say; because I figure that, either my friends are saying nice things that i appreciate, or my enemies are saying mean things that i can ignore.
This also reminds me of an old adage:
"The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it. If you can't top it, laugh at it. If you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved."
- John Russell Lynes, Jr.
But the only benefit from gossip is when it leads to community moderation of the original problems.
Nonetheless, I have developed a simple rule for my own conversation strategy:
when I am speaking of a person who is not in my immediate company, i will only say those things about them which I would would say to them if they were present.
i.e. I don't say things behind someone's back that I wouldn't say to their face.
After talking to a few people about how they just don't feel comfortable with confrontation, I have endeavored to develop an environment in which all people could feel comfortable venting their spleen.
I think that if people begin to practice this kind of radical honesty, that we will find that it will ultimately benefit our community -- even though it may require more initial investment of time and energy. Basically, I figure that if people have time to complain about someone, even though they don't feel comfortable talking directly to the person, they could instead take the time to make an anonymous post in this journal, and give that person the opportunity to address the concerns. I believe that we will find that issues are easily exaggerated and otherwise taken out of context, when they are not brought directly to the source of the perceived problem.
Perhaps I am an idealist; but from an anthropological perspective, I believe that the only way for a community to deal with its problems is for them to be addressed immediately, directly, fearlessly, honestly, and openly. Evidence of how well this works can be found in this essay: Subsistence Among the Orang Asli.
--
In my search for the proper forum in which to address these concerns, i found myself travelling back to Athenian Greece... to the Areopagus, The hill of Ares (Areios pagos).
Images of the Areopagus:
here and here
At the Areopagus, according to Pausanias, in the Attica section of his Description of Greece:
` ` there are unhewn stones on which stand the defendants and the prosecutors, they call The Stone of Outrage and The Stone of Ruthlessness. ' '
According to "An Introduction to Classical Athenian Democracy," by Christopher W. Blackwell:
` ` The orator Lycurgus tells his fellow Athenians that, you have, in the Council of the Areopagus, the finest model in Greece: a court so superior to others that even the men convicted in it admit that its judgements are just (Lycurg. 1.12). ' '
The Areopagus was also the place where the Apostle Paul discussed Xtianity with a crowd of curious Athenian philosophers. Perhaps some of you may be familiar with Paul's
Address to the Athenians at the Areopagus, recorded in Acts 17:22-31. By that time, the Areopagus had become a place where cultures, faiths, values and philosophies came into dialogue.
Some of you may be familiar with the Areopagus through: Areopagitica, by John Milton, which was published to defend the rights of the Free Press.
Milton's "Areopagitica" was addressed to Parliament and adopts the form of an oration, written rather than spoken, following the rules of classical rhetoric.
This essay provides some great analysis... Milton's Areopagitica and the Modern First Amendment, by Vincent Blasi:
` ` One (of the three significant ideas in Areopagitica) is that truth is strong and will prevail without the help of the censor's coercive assistance.
...
A second feature of Milton's thought ... is the claim that the endeavor of seeking to know the truth--or to put it in less grandiose terms, to improve one's understanding--has particular priority.
...
A third idea in Milton that has achieved some undeserved modern currency is that exposure to falsity is valuable to the appreciation of truth. Erroneous opinions he characterizes as "dust and cinders" that "may yet serve to polish and brighten the armory of truth." He describes how a "discreet and judicious" reader can use bad books "to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate." More than two hundred years after Milton wrote, John Stuart Mill was to build his Essay On Liberty around a secular reformulation of these notions.
I have no doubt of the validity of this line of argument. In fact, I regard as possibly the two most important pages I have ever read the passage in On Liberty in which Mill argues, from Cicero, that a person should strive to understand his opponents' ideas with greater imagination and sympathy than he devotes to knowing his own. If every advocate and every scholar would only reread those pages before entering the lists, the world would be a better place.
...
Milton's case for free expression depends in no small degree on his observation, repeated throughout the tract in a variety of figurations, that vitality is the defining quality of a political community, and that vitality cannot be maintained--stagnation will inevitably set in--if the prescriptions of Custom and Authority are allowed to go unchallenged.
...
this seems to me the crux of Areopagitica, is that without a robust commitment to free-wheeling disputation, (and) without what Jeremy Waldron has usefully termed "ethical confrontation" of the most pervasive sort, it is impossible to sustain an energetic, adaptive, vibrant society ... "I cannot praise," (Milton) says, "a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary." ' '
--
So, if anyone has anything confrontational that they would like to say to me, here and now would be an excellent place to start... by replying to this post.
And if you would appreciate the same treatment, then please feel free to make a new post; and we, as a community, will return the favor.