that he can actually accuse you of circular argument
That is definitely one of the most amazing distortions we've seen.
We all have our own way of looking at things. We have touchstones that ground us. We have pet peeves and hobby horses. We have philosophical and experiential frameworks. We have truths or truth-like principles. We have our own unique way of understanding the world.
For example, we know that Brees places a high value on telling the truth, so high a value, it seems, that it's become an organizing principle for him in his morality scheme. I say that because yesterday he seemed to be treating gossip as a subset of lying when they're really two very different things, I think. I'm not trying to make an issue here of the relationship between lying and gossip, or to pick on Brees, merely to illustrate the influence of framework. I've noticed over time that Greg has an unusual usage of the word, objective. He seems to equate it with conformance with the Bible. If it conforms with the Bible it's objective, otherwise it's not. Framework.
I've fussed at Solon at times because he tends to want to discuss things in his own unique language where words have his own tweaked definitions. That's hard for me to do. Just recently I sent the thread off on a tangent because I attach connotations to the word, morality, that make it hard for me to treat the word like everyone else. There was a more recent discussion about being happy or unhappy that I didn't enter at all because I have a problem with that word, too. (Those are the only two words that affect me that way as far as I know. I really need to get over it.)
We all have messages to share. We all have things to learn. Some of us try harder than others to hear other messages. Some of us are more agile than others in understanding other ways of looking at things. None of us is truly adept at it. Observing that process is often more interesting than the subject matter being discussed.
Speaking of process, part of the process is the venue. I thought we had a pretty nice venue here, relatively speaking. It's less nice than it used to be. For the venue to be viable, we need to work as a team. We were talking the other day about leaderless teams. We are one. One of the elements of team membership is to just show up. Many of us no longer show up and I miss them. We can't talk if there's no one to talk with. Others of us so routinely ignore those who show up that the discussions become distorted or we're effectively talking to ourselves. Perhaps it's all over for our little venue.
Just ruminating.
Karen |
