I just had an interesting (frustrating) conversation with my mother. I have known her authoritarian tendencies for a long time, and although they have frequently, long been a source of frustration, as I think is an experience shared by many people my age, I try to learn from those tendencies rather than react rashly from them.
aqua bubble key genCertainly even authoritarians say things with kernels of truth in them. But it isn't so much what you say, but how and in what manner you say it that matters when speaking of an "authoritarian," so that is beside the point, although it is important not to throw away someone's ideas because they proceed from such a mindset.
It is, in the end, sad to think she, or anyone, thinks they know me better than I know myself. Feedback about my behavior is, of course, incredibly useful and appreciated, since we sometimes do things that we don't entirely understand or even realize. But humans are rife with confusion in thinking they have access to the inner parts of other humans.
In any case, it is a continuing challenge to confront such error calmly and resolutely. I realize the reality that it is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to change people who are locked into their own semantic jumble of nonsense. But it is a better difficult challenge to keep the focus on myself, and not allow anger to overcome correct thinking.
Those who justify do not convince. - Lao Tzu
Something I've always noticed but could never put my finger on:
When you are discussing something contentious with people, they often, out of habit of mind, I think, take the least appealing view of your argument and address it. It's something like a casual straw man, and it happens all the time in normal discussion and debate. Often times I think it can be somewhat subtle or unrecognized. When it isn't, my experience is that you spend the rest of your time reiterating your argument simply because a perverted one keeps being addressed...
Then again, I think a lot of the logical fallacies are most insidious not when there are grievous errors made, but small ones.
Why? I get a kick out of smashing apart someone's argument sometimes. Invariably this involves the intellectual dishonesty of taking a slightly modified version of their argument (to my advantage, of course), usually riddled with sarcasm, and making the original argument look silly. I think other people have similar experiences.
There is another matter here. I think it is the desire in interaction with other people to come out looking strongest or the most adept. This is another aspect I've never been able to quite put my finger on. Honestly and graciously attempting to find flaws in a person's actual argument (or your most forgiving perception of it) is limited and requires self-control. And, basically, it isn't very fun. On the other hand, if you can disagree strongly, point out flaws in the argument that would be well covered had it not been transformed into a straw man, and generally force the issue in a certain sort of way it is a boost to the ego. It has been for me, anyway. My impressions are that others experience it as well.
This sort of involves the difference in communication between a game of force and actual mediation of the issues. So often communication comes down to -- at best -- a battle to see who can stroke their ego the most, or at worst, a simple alternative to using your fists.
Taking a more theoretical view, I think this involves different perceptions of the nature of communication. I have moved among the spectrum at different times, and my experience is that you can words and their culmination, concepts, as hard-and-fast absolutisms or as sort of awkward tools meant to hammer away a general image. Lately I (try to) take the latter view, whereas I am aware that many people take the former.
We are creatures that function with much digitality 'in' a world that is continuous; we widely confuse our useful digital methods with the reality. Language is monadic by nature, we respond to language in bits. Language is widely used by humans to describe a maelstrom. My purpose is to show that the methods that have grown from our pre-history into the present have not explicitly recognised this mismatch at the heart of our experience.
As a result, people who see language as more reliable than perhaps they ought to tend to view arguments and ideas very strictly. Therefore, they take their own extensions of those ideas with little caution.
Here, a "pre-scientific" view of language is explained:
In a prescientific orientation, the natural process of projection is carried out unconsciously (relative lack of "to-me-ness"). It is realized only vaguely, or not at all, that every statement conveys information about the speaker as well as information about whatever the speaker may seem to be talking about; and the degree of self-reference is largely ignored in evaluating the statement's factual significance.
In other words, one's own perceptions about an argument are expounded just as much as the argument itself in a response. There is an inclination to have a high degree of faith in one's own interpretation of concepts and events. So those casual straw men slip right by.
For me, as a practice, it is a matter of choosing when and when not to confront such errors. Moreover, it is a matter of correcting and avoiding such errors within myself, as it is very easy to make the same ones out of frustration or anger.