Truth & Paradox
by Jason GodeskyTo call a movement “reactionary” carries denotations of backwards, repressive ideas. It first found usage in the aftermath of the French Revolution, in reference to those who supported the monarchical Ancien Régime. But all reactionary movements share a fundamental problem in their predisposition towards overcorrection. Who could argue that the “Age of Faith” had not created terrible problems—and “problems” puts it mildly. Yet the Enlightenment fell to the same proclivity. It did not merely assert the importance of logic and critical thought; Enlightenment writers posited Science as the best, or even the only, way of knowing. Today, much of primitivism suffers from an equal and opposite reactionary movement, as the Romantic movement did in an earlier reaction to the Enlightenment. At the risk of falling prey to that same trend, this provides an opportunity to make an important counter-point: why we need critical thought.
Ran Prieur points to his longer work on this matter, “The Grand Diversifying Theory,” saying:
I accept Wilhelm Reich’s orgonomy, Charles Fort’s rains of frogs, Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic fields, Halton Arp’s astronomy, and all kinds of alternative science. I think UFO’s are a hoax by fairies, and I’m not joking. What I’m getting at is a style of thinking that utterly rejects closure, that keeps looking beyond with the persistence of water flowing downhill.
More recently, Aaron at Village Blog wrote a fairly hurtful post aimed at attacking me personally, from which I’ve taken the title for this post, where he takes me to task for thinking critically. He repeats much of what Ran says, noting:
Of course combat seems to be the very nature of academic debate. It doesn’t surprise me that academic methods are destructive since academia’s first priority is to reinforce the hierarchy and it’s values (including separation from self, community and land), and this means avoiding communal style collaboration. I remember a lecturer at architecture school who taught design in a genuine collaborative environment - he was universally reviled by the other lecturers.
Never mind that academia provides nearly the only enclave of the gift economy remaining in modern civilization, the very enclave that inspired the free software movement; that kind of thinking would look for disconfirmation, for problems with our thoughts, rather than simply looking for confirmation. That would require critical thought. Critical thought asks what we can find wrong in our thought patterns. It can feel difficult to subject ourselves to that level of scrutiny, and when we do so, we might find that fascinating ideas (like morphic fields, or UFO’s, or the so-called “9/11 Truth Movement”) can’t hold up. We might even decide that the fault lies with critical thought itself, because we really, really wish that such a thing could stand up. Critical thought feels like hard work, and it often feels better to simply forego it. Aaron says he feels right at home at Ran’s site, but feels trepadation every time he visits Anthropik, “in fear of what new calamity I will encounter there.” He wonders, “How would it be if the debate could be effective without having to be so damned ‘robust’”?
Ran has often used the terms “scout” and “cartographer” to grasp at this difference. On the now-defunct IshCon forums, Chuck once posted “The Parable of The Gatekeeper and the Cartographers.” The parable seems particularly apt here. Ran readily admits, ” I often say that I’m a scout, not a cartographer, and that’s why! When it gets that technical, I lose interest and move on to something new.” That has great value. Ran has called me a cartographer, and I think that just might fit me. Ran often acts as my “Gatekeeper,” to use the terms from Chuck’s parable. Ran’s writing gives me things to think about, and ultimately, things to write about and explore. But that doesn’t mean that I always agree with him. After all, as a scout, Ran finds new leads; as a cartographer, I follow them up and see where they go. Sometimes, a path that looks promising at the outset ends up wrapping back on itself and going nowhere. He lacks the patience to follow every idea he has to its conclusion, and that poses no problem. With so many ideas, we need scouts like Ran to find those leads, to look at things a little differently, to keep coming up with new, fresh ideas.
Critical thought draws the line that divides scouts like Ran from cartographers. Cartographers begin their work where scouts end theirs. They follow up on those leads, chart them, and find out where they go. Scouts have big imaginations; cartographers feel inspired by those imaginations, but they also keep a respect for critical thought. They want to know where those imaginings lead. If I act as a cartographer, that happens only because I apply critical thought, and follow the implications of ideas set forth by scouts like Ran.
We need both. We need imagination, or critical thought simply shuts us down and leads us into stagnation. By the same token, we need critical thought, as well; without that, we accept whatever we might imagine uncritically. I’ve already mentioned some prime examples of the kinds of things we end up believing when we neglect critical thought: things like morphic fields, or UFO’s, or the so-called “9/11 Truth Movement.” Ran himself has illustrated for us where this can eventually lead recently, commenting on the 9/11 attacks: “There is no such thing as what really happened. The 9/11 operation is like quantum physics: so shifty and weird that it can only be resolved by abandoning the concept of objective truth.” Of course, it seems patently obvious what happened: 19 angry Arabs with box-cutters, and the huge, gaping holes in security that complexity makes inevitable. But that hardly “feels” right, given the magnitude of the effect, as easily as we might believe the cause. I’ll not rehash the same tired arguments here about the melting point of steel, or the supposed “free-fall” of the twin towers—you can find those arguments elsewhere in far greater detail than I can provide here, and for those unconvinced, another round of repeating the evidence will hardly change any minds—but the illustration here, with a fellow as intelligent and engaged as Ran, exactly where we end up when we abandon robust, critical thought, as Aaron wishes. We end up with many of the same problems that Robert Anton Wilson argued the verb “to be” gives us, in his essay, “Towards Understanding E-Prime“: we “begin the insidious process by which we move gradually from paradox to nonsense to total gibberish.”
According to Scott Peck, author of The Different Drum, all truth has an inherently paradoxical quality. That kind of meaningless double-talk can hardly lead anywhere good. Paradox does not herald truth; it highlights precisely where the problems in our thinking patterns lay. Look at the development of Christian theology: the paradox of salvation by good works versus salvation by faith would never exist had Christianity greater respect for critical thought. Chief among the problems that weighed down Christianity by the end of the “Age of Faith,” requiring the Enlightenment, one finds that same “insidious process by which we move gradually from paradox to nonsense to total gibberish.” It may seem difficult to remember today, but Christian theology actually has a rich philosophical tradition. But different ideas, made by entirely different people, all became accepted as “the Word of the Lord.” Christians could not repeal scripture, no matter how little sense it made. When the early Christians compiled their Bible, they made no pretense about it as the literal word of G-d; that would not come about until the American Fundamentalist movement in the nineteenth century. They knew they had simply collected a number of important works, none of them divine in origin, and they knew they all reflected the opinions of different respected religious leaders. But in time, as the Bible became codified and increasingly difficult to question, both salvation by good works and salvation by faith, both with their separate Biblical bases, became matters of dogma, and so dogma developed a paradoxical nature. The two doctrines contradicted one another; yet both, coming from the Bible and reflected in church law, must “be true.” From thence came the “mysteries of faith,” and how we cannot understand the paradoxical nature of divinity.
Such meaningless double-talk has always provided the last bulwark of those too committed to their ideas to change their minds, who would rather the rest of us simply fall silent and do as they tell us. Truth has a paradoxical quality only when the “truth” you try to promote follows from a hopeless mish-mash of unexamined assumptions, outright biases, and lazy, uncritical thought. When we think critically, paradox tells us where we need to focus our attention; it highlights where we have accepted something too readily, something that we should never have accepted in the first place.
Ran’s work as a scout differs from my own, but I still respect what he does greatly. Aaron’s essay asks for execution of all the cartographers. We don’t need them—who needs maps, anyway? Doesn’t filling in the map just mean we have less to explore? Who does that cartographer think he “is,” telling me a mountain stands over there? I want a lake there!
As I said from the beginning, we find this strain of thought in most reactionary movements. The Enlightenment did not simply correct for the “mysteries of faith” that Christianity had introduced; it went farther, overreacting and putting forward a new religion, wherein Science stood as the best, or even the only way of knowing. No, we can hardly call science itself a religion, but science can make no claims for its own pre-eminence or exclusive claim to knowledge. Such claims seem inherently unscientific. We can certainly call those claims a religion, because they do not follow from evidence the way science itself does; they simply constitute assertions of faith.
But now we see an equal-and-opposite reactionary movement, resembling the Romantic movement that preceded it in many ways. Aaron goes on to highlight some of the problems he sees in critical thought, and why he believes it does not offer a valid or useful tool for understanding.
Where I’m going with this is that I believe that the academic method is a very flawed way of chasing the truth, not just because it zeroes in on the details and loses the big picture but also because it uses combat as a debating method.
Whilst it’s true that an argument that can withstand immense criticism must be a good one, the war-like nature of the debate puts the proponent of any new idea immediately on the back foot and they have to ‘dig themselves in’ to withstand the assault.
It’s a real waste of time and energy in it’s own right but also because the proponent of an idea is the person in the best place to be critiquing it - after all, who else knows it so well. I know this is a strange idea for our culture, I’m expecting most people will be pretty sceptical of it and I would be too if I hadn’t observed Ran doing this very thing in some of his writing.
It seems telling that in backing up his hurtful assertion that, “In all honesty I don’t think that Jason values the relationship as much as the need to win a debate,” Aaron points to public disagreements with my friends, namely, Ran Prieur and Toby Hemenway. To show how I don’t value relationships over winning debates, he points to people with whom I still have cordial, friendly and supportive relationships. Doesn’t that seem like Aaron has missed something?
Debate provides an excellent means by which to hone ideas and sharpen them; if we still have the same ideas at the end, we’ve still learned new angles, new edges, and new facets of them by having them tested. Even better, the debate may have changed our minds, and given us new ideas. To learn that an idea cannot stand scrutiny in a debate makes things far easier than to pursue that idea for years, only to fall victim, again, to “the insidious process by which we move gradually from paradox to nonsense to total gibberish.” I have followed both paths; the latter, perhaps most costly with Daniel Quinn’s conflation of horticulture and agriculture. That simple conflation cost me years of confusion as I ran in circles (hence the passion with which I now argue for their distinction).
But ultimately, Aaron’s objections come to fruition only if we act in very juvenile, even infantile, ways. In my family, we cultivated the debate almost like a sport. It had no malice in it, no personal aggrievement. We knew that our ideas did not define us. Ideas do not tell us who we “are”. We have ideas; we let them go, and we get new ones. They come to us, and they leave. How could a debate ever become a personal grudge match? Aaron cites times that I called Toby’s argument “dodgy,” or when I referred to Ran’s “loopy logic,” and from that says that I insult and attack. He writes:
I don’t have or want a problem with Jason, I gain immensely from his writing and there is far more to be gained from keeping the peace – but not at any cost. His behaviour errs on the destructive side at times and I’m hoping he will get the opportunity to see that sometime. It’s true that I wasn’t a lot different ten years ago so there’s hope for everyone.
But I never insulted, or attacked, or destroyed anyone with whom I have a relationship. I did not call Ran loopy; I did not call Toby dodgy. We talked about ideas, not people. We can describe ideas in any number of ways, but nothing said of an idea could ever constitute an insult, because we have ideas, they do not define us. Thus, the unspoken premise of Aaron’s argument seems to assume an extremely juvenile attitude that cannot distinguish between ideas and the people who think them.
We can and must question our ideas. Our ideas can lead us into very bad places, if we let them. But they can also open new doors and new possibilities. Critical thought offers us a means of distinguishing between those ideas that empower us, and those that diminish us; those that hold up to scrutiny, and those that don’t. We should remember the fun and sport of contesting ideas; Ran’s demeanor shows clearly how much he loves to think and explore new possibilities. Done well, critical thought and debate can fill the same purpose. We should have the maturity to debate as fiercely as we do joyfully, a sport of the mind that sharpens us and reveals which of our ideas strengthen us the most.
I think Willem Larsen put it best when he wrote that logic and critical thought give us a tool for understanding our world. Not our only tool, nor our best tool, but a good tool, a powerful tool, and a useful tool. We should not feel afraid to use it. It can help us greatly. Neither should we mistake it for our only tool. We should use it when appropriate, and when we finish with it, we should thank it for its help and put it back in our toolbox.
You might have noticed things moving more slowly here over the past week. Some of that has to do with personal changes I’ll probably mention in more detail later, but I would lie to you if I said it had nothing to do with the unrelenting attack I’ve suffered on the intertubes this past week. As I mention here, I have no problem debating ideas, but these people have gotten mean, and they’ve gotten personal. I’ll admit: it got to the point where I felt quite helpless, and even considered closing up shop here for good. But now, it’s just gotten me pissed off. So I’ve decided to come back, and to come back swinging.
Here you have exhibit A. You can read Aaron’s post for yourself, if you like; it hit me pretty hard when I first read it, but when I read it a fourth time, it struck me as the most cowardly, double-talking piece of sophistic insinuation I’ve read in a long, long time. Try reading it critically, and I think you’ll see what I mean.
Next up, some kind words for those supportive folks who’ve had so many nice things to say to encourage me about the Fifth World, and Giuli about the Fabulous Forager.
Then, a response to “How to Save Civilization.” OK, I don’t actually have anything against Ran, I don’t feel any anger towards him, and I’d hardly call my response the kind of counter-attack launched here, but it’s a response, which kind of fits the theme here, right? Ran raises a lot of interesting points, and a lot of them I disagree with, so I’ll write out all the why’s and wherefore’s about that, ’cause that what I do.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 September 2007 @ 8:37 PM
jason,
i find myself often in the role that you are here inhabiting - the generous giver of hard ideas who is criticized for the hard way of arguing the ideas.
i think your main point in this answer is clear - you do what you do, and your doing contributes. so back off, critics!
if you were the person who thought things through gently or purely-collaboratively (which is an orientation to group process that of course can lead to group think) you wouldn’t be able to make the contributions you make. thus - suggestions that you change your tone or style are misguided efforts to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
i would argue, in addition, that just as you SHOULD do what you do, that others should do what they do. aaron’s comments didn’t seem to strike at your love for your friends, or your honor, or your mother - they were about your style of posting on the internet. aaron’s comment could be better read as an analysis than a personal attack - an attempt to process - from one point of view - the internet posting style of a widely quoted figure with the initials jason godesky.
one aspect of group dynamics i’ve noticed, and in some ways it is a healthy one, is the attempt to maintain a certain equality of relation. if people can’t be equal in debating theory, the people with a vaguer understanding will shift the ground of the discussion to something they do feel confident about (such as group dynamics : ).
aaron’s self-deprecating-condescending line about “10 years ago …” to the side he does make a point i’d also noticed. you always seem to be embroiled in a controversy and there’s some kind of personal antagonism involved. this is also something i can relate to. but how could it always be the other guy? you use the example of your friendship with ran - but ran is kind of an exceptional person who is pretty slippery when it comes to how he uses his time and energy - and doesn’t seem to want to be drawn into the dance of primate dominance sublimated through intellectual mastery. he’d prefer to paint with ideas. you (and i) do gravitate towards (so many mixed metaphors) these “debates”. i don’t think it does any harm to acknowledge that, examine it, and consider implications. one aspect is that polarization puts some people strongly and personally on your side! that’s better for a lot of us emotionally than some kind of spectrum of ideas with no particular commitment.
so do what you do! do it as well as you can. we are all misunderstood, we are all subject to disease, old age, and death. we all need some luck and some love and some forbearance. your gifts (and you are right, sometimes an attack is a gift) are important. thank you for sharing them.
Comment by juggleandhope — 17 September 2007 @ 9:21 PM
Thank you for your kind words. I agree basically with most of what you said, but I don’t think Aaron kept it to simply doing what he does, as you say. I see you, too, noticed how unbelievably condescending he seemed when he wrote, “It’s true that I wasn’t a lot different ten years ago so there’s hope for everyone,” but what really got me came with: “In all honesty I don’t think that Jason values the relationship as much as the need to win a debate.” That crossed the line in a big, big way.
You make a good point with Ran, but what about Toby Hemenway? Or some of the others Aaron didn’t mention, like Urban Scout? I don’t think anyone can say that Scout backs down from a challenge. Sure, I take all comers, and that doesn’t sit with some people very well. Most people don’t enjoy having their ideas challenged, and I think that explains the relatively constant controversy. The recent MetaFilter thread came about when they decided to pick on Scout, and there I stood in the middle of the firestorm. Why? Because I take all comers; I walked right into, fully knowing what would follow. So to some extent, yes, I bring it on myself, because I go where I need to go, even when I know it won’t go happily for me. Of course, my closest friends tend to come from those people who have very strong wills and very strong ideas, and enjoy having their ideas challenged as much as I do. I don’t think you can make the case that I only get along with people who bend to my aggression, or who side-step it entirely. I run with a pretty opinionated group, and the ones I feel closest to also challenge me the most. Because when you do have an honest willingness to explore your ideas and challenge them as much as you challenge others’, you do find a very strong kinship with those who do the same.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 September 2007 @ 9:33 PM
“I run with a pretty opinionated group, and the ones I feel closest to also challenge me the most. Because when you do have an honest willingness to explore your ideas and challenge them as much as you challenge others’, you do find a very strong kinship with those who do the same.”
I think you summed it up. Jesus, please don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. You don’t know how excited I get when I read some of your responses to people, like over in the nature of cities article. Your responses are so good they make me tingle with joy. I’m serious. I literally feel elated with excitement when I read them. So, from my own selfish reasons, please don’t ever, ever stop writing and debating.
I see these kinds of discussions like the last scene in The Story of B when Jared finds himself challenged by one of the other B’s. That’s how I saw those battles on Ishcon too. Though we did get pretty personal sometimes, we have proved to relate in a way that feels priceless and hard to find.
By the way, I think “Machine Gun” sounds a lot cooler than “Cartographer.”
Comment by Urban Scout — 17 September 2007 @ 11:05 PM
Also…
Critical thinking includes “looking beyond with the persistence of water flowing downhill.” Any serious critical thinker will look beyond the evidence, always keep an eye out for something that doesn’t match what they previously thought. In fact, that’s exactly what critical thinking is; going over and over and over the evidence looking for more or counter arguments and loop holes. Looking beyond means having your facts there but also remaining open to change. What could you be “looking beyond” but your current thoughts on a subject. That’s why we have debate for chrissake; to have others help us stretch and look beyond our current thoughts.
The statement “a style of thinking that utterly rejects closure” sounds cute, but means nothing at all. It sounds rather like saying, “A style of eating that utterly rejects digestion.” I would call it “loopy logic” but than, someone might write a scathing blog about how mean I am, and I can only handle so much internet bashing at a time. I’m just now getting over the meta-filter crap!
Comment by Urban Scout — 17 September 2007 @ 11:31 PM
off-topic, but possibly of interest:
“An appeal filed by Pitt’s Environmental Law Clinic is among those being considered by the U.S. Forest Service as it reviews comments on a land management plan for the Allegheny National Forest.”
(break)
“The Environmental Law Clinic’s appeal, filed on behalf of the Allegheny Defense Project and Heartwood environmental groups, Tionesta Valley Snowmobile Club and five individuals, is among those that remain under review by the Forest Service, which has targeted a Dec. 10 response date, Miller said. In addition to its own 180-page appeal, the law clinic has submitted responses to several other appeals that were submitted to the Forest Service.
The law clinic’s appeal calls for the forest plan to be withdrawn and redone, outlining a number of perceived shortcomings. The largest, Buchele said, centers on how oil and gas development issues were handled in the plan. Other prime issues were the Forest Service’s failure to address climate change, air pollution and recreation.
The 180-page appeal states in part, “Although the revision process purported to deal with the biggest and newest issues impacting the forest, the Forest Service failed to include oil and gas development as such an issue. The Final Environmental Impact Statement, as part of its cumulative effects analysis, does document somewhat the explosive growth in such development over the past few years and into the foreseeable future. But the alternatives analysis and the revised plan do almost nothing to address this huge adverse impact on the forest in any sort of comprehensive or mandatory way. … Climate change is another issue that the FS has almost completely ignored in the revision documents.””
http://mac10.umc.pitt.edu/u/FMPro?-db=ustory&-lay=a&-format=d.html&storyid=7706&-Find
we got bigger fish to fry ’round these parts. there is no time for in-fighting.
Jason & Guili, i do believe your hearts are in a good place, and i also believe (hope?) that Aaron did not mean anything personally, i’m sure that Ran’s head doesn’t work that way. sometimes us “old” people (nearing the 40’s mark for Pete’s sake) maybe feel pressured more by the urgency of the times, and react differently than younger people? i don’t know. but whatever you do, don’t stop doing your thing…just maybe try to see how sometimes your real goal may not be best served if you come on too strong? i’m not sure how much time we have for debating the particulars, you know?
you teach me how to make a bow drill, and i don’t care if we *ever* agree on the theory of WHY that’s the best way to make fire, that’s all i’m saying!
: )
(sorry yinz missed the hide-tanning class, too! i’m still thinking about trying to talk Patrick into letting me–and possibly Ran–do the Advanced Primitive Weekend without having taken the Pre-Req!)
-patricia
Comment by patricia — 18 September 2007 @ 2:55 AM
NOTE–that was supposed to be an old school smiley up there, where you see the pointless parenthesis, but somehow the colon got et up…aye? old people, what can i tell you? damn interwebs.
-p.
Comment by patricia — 18 September 2007 @ 3:03 AM
Jason,
There’s a few corrections I want to make. I’ll stick to the less emotive ones for the time being and hopefully get back on the other stuff a bit later.
You wrote that my post was ‘aimed at attacking me personally’. This is not the case. My aim was to do some thinking out loud and while it’s true that this included some criticism of your approach to debate it was certainly not the aim of the piece, nor was it the sole focus. I of course understand that my comments could be taken personally but causing injury is not what I ever seek to do - especially not for it’s own sake.
Because it implies a great many things I’ll also clarify the “Aaron says he feels right at home at Ran’s site” comment: I was attempting to
make a point about how a writer can debate someone without belittling them in the process. I thought Ran does this well which is why I used his site as an example.
I was not taking you to task for thinking critically. You are welcome to view it in that light of course but I do not have a problem with critical thinking, and nor was I trying to say that critical thinking is problematic. To be honest I don’t know how I would even mount such an arguement. I do however have a problem with the combative approach to debating, - which is what a large portion of the article was about. I also do not think that Ran’s leaving-doors-open approach necessarily excludes critical thinking (ultimately, however that is for him to say).
I can assure you that the comment: “Aaron’s essay asks for execution of all the cartographers” is not what I have in mind. Not even a partial maiming in fact:-)
Your quite right that the “I was like that ten years ago” comment was condescending. Really it shouldn’t have been in there, it’s very hard to say that sort of thing without coming over like a patronising old bugger - perhaps a reason to leave such things unsaid.
I also would like to agree with the other comments people made to not stop what you’re doing - obviously I’ve added a bit to that something about proceeding more gently but I’d be mortified if I ended up being the person who put an end to the body of work you’re producing here. As I said, I benefit greatly from it.
Comment by Aaron — 18 September 2007 @ 4:19 AM
Hey –
And so it comes around again, eh? Same think over at IshThink this last week. Matt and I have been labeled ‘bullies’ and taken to task for standing up for a certain set of ideas… ah well. Surprised, I am not.
The Scout/Cartographer metaphor is a good one. And YES, damn it, we need our cartographers, too! I think, in fact, that you have allowed me to finally begin to grasp, just a little, WHY debate gets so many people upset. Still don;t agree, and even though I sometimes get rather invested in a debate and even emotionally riled up, I still see it as an exercise, a game, a way to test ourselves mentally just as a sporting event might test us physically. No one would criticise a runner for trying to win a marathon, but when one gives everything they’ve got to a debate, they become ‘mean’.
Crap… I’m babbling a bit… been a rough couple ‘o weeks. Point is, as nasty as it gets and as much as you need to pull yourself away a breathe sometimes, you also need to wade back in again. For you, for us, for life…. remember there’s always gonna be someone around to help if you need it!
Janene
Comment by janene — 18 September 2007 @ 8:45 AM
Wow.
After reading Aaron’s blog entry last night, then Jason’s reply this morning, I half expected to find bloodshed in the comments.
I must say, I’m pleasantly surprised.
Comment by jhereg — 18 September 2007 @ 9:04 AM
The way I look at it, the intuitive mind and the rational mind (some people like to say “right-brain and left-brain”, but that reflects an oversimplified conception of how the brain works, and besides, we’re talking about the mind more than we are the brain anyway) both act as a check and a balance on one another. The problem I have with the skeptizealots is that their worship (yes, worship) of science and the rational-mind approach over everything else is that this mindset is a tool of dominator-culture and a concomitant refusal to honestly look at the catastrophic havoc this culture has wrought upon the planet. The imperial arrogance with which far too many of them promote their worldview attests to their being part and parcel of dominator-culture’s tyranny.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 18 September 2007 @ 9:45 AM
One of the major hurdles I’ve personally faced getting into primitivism is the sheer amount of “mystical” thinking often involved. For example, I was really interested in the 5th world project, until I got to the “and magic returns to the earth” I still wonder, can we have a primitive way of life without animism, if we can become closer to nature without personifying it. I don’t mind it, per se, but my own experience tells me that I can usually grok things just as well without it.
Critical thinking absolutely has a place in rewilding; it was critical thinking about civilization and it’s myths that go most of us here in the first place.
I have a thousand thoughts to share on “subjective reality”, but after a 10 minutes of typing I realize this either needs to be an essay, or a real chat with friends. The medium of message board comments is a poor place to share the concepts. But the basic Idea it this: Reality itself exists as it is, it isn’t some waveform waiting for us to look at it. But what we know, what we CAN know, about reality is limited to ideas. How well those ideas match up with reality determines how useful they are. But no idea can ever be the truth, even though the truth does exist; Because the truth isn’t an idea, it’s reality.
I think your “cartographer/scout” analogy is mixed up. The idea men, like Ran, they sit and draw maps. Lots of maps. Whatever looks good and fun. The critical thinkers, they go out and see, well, is there really a mountain where this map says there is?
Comment by Andrew Jensen — 18 September 2007 @ 10:20 AM
OK, but the fact that critical thinking has been used to cut down alternatives to dominator culture doens’t mean that critical thinking is only good for that. Those who worship skepticism rarely apply critical thinking to the areas that would undermine their own world view, in fact, they are poor critical thinkers in that regard. The mistake they make is beleiving that there has to be one right answer, that there can only be one explanation for things. Critical thinking merely determines how consistent a model of thought is, not how “right” it is.
Comment by Andrew Jensen — 18 September 2007 @ 10:26 AM
Man, I wish I could edit.
This is where the “all elements of truth have some paradox” comes in. Or As I’ve always said “If it all makes sense, you are missing something.” Our ideas of reality are always incomplete. There will always be some real thing outside the scope of our imagined models. And thank god, because a universe simple enough to understand would be boring.
Comment by Andrew Jensen — 18 September 2007 @ 10:29 AM
I hope I’m not drifting too far off-topic here, but I just thought I’d take this moment to volunteer the thought that I don’t understand why so many evangelical Christians need the creation account in Genesis to be literally true. The books of The Bible were meant to be teachers of spiritual truths, not a biology or physics textbook. It makes a lot more sense to look at the creation account renedered in Genesis to be poetry saying that God created the universe and nature, and he put a great deal of care and thought into doing so. Viewed that way, Genesis is relating a spiritual truth without trying to force the creation myth to be something it is not and can’t really be.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 18 September 2007 @ 11:00 AM
Back to the important stuff, man this summer my beans grew like wildfire! So many beans…green peppers turned out crap, and I realize that you can grow tons of stuff w/ compost even when its not completely finished turning into black gold.
So is everyone here pretty much just reading/writing/learning and waiting around for the modern world to start snowballing a bit quicker?
So much conflict, so little time.
Comment by Bubba — 18 September 2007 @ 12:58 PM
anyone in the P-burgh area looking to network with local/regional organic food, craft, art & other similar types, and/or mark the Fall Equinox, or look for new tribe members, etc., may wish to stop by here on Sunday noon-5ish:
“Join a Fresh Crop of Local Artists at the 2nd Annual Co-op Art Harvest!
Our local block party celebrating the local community and the autumn harvest- right in front of the Co-op on Meade Street.
Over 30 local artists displaying and selling their handmade work including jewelry, painting, glasswork, cool stuff made from recycled materials, pottery, knits and more!”
http://www.eastendfoodcoop.com
if you can find the corner of Penn Avenue and Braddock Avenue, i’m guessing you can just follow the sound of drums from that point!
Comment by patricia — 18 September 2007 @ 1:38 PM
A few questions that may or may not seem ridiculous:
When we speak of Critical Thought are we talking about a universally developed human quality, or of something that could only have grown from civilisation? Did pre-conquest indigenous peoples have the opportunity to discover ideas that they didn’t like, before civilisation came along to give them a whole raft of absurdities to reject and move on from? Would they even have been capable of thinking outside their own ‘cultural bias’ (and why should they want to)?
Why would the powerful within civilisation have permitted the ascendency of rigorously applied logic when it can so obviously be turned back onto the lies they rely on to keep the population in check? My guess is that it’s use in pushing science forward (science always in service to the economy - so far but no further) outweighed the possible blowback which, at any rate, would be limited to the intellectual / literate minority. Finally, will we have the occasion to use our hard-won critical faculties once they are no longer required to defend us against civilisation’s onslaught?
…
‘True words seem paradoxical’ - Tao Te Ching, v.78
Is this “a hopeless mish-mash of unexamined assumptions, outright biases, and lazy, uncritical thought”? I find that my favourite truths are those that disappear like optical illusions when you focus too much attention on them, or perhaps the wrong kind of attention on them like a creature wriggling away from under the surgeon’s knife.
…
Quinn said he felt like Leif Erikson tramping around on a whole new continent of thought that nobody from his culture would care about for hundreds of years. Whether we’re scouts or cartographers, we should take our time over it and enjoy our pioneer status. We should however be careful with what habits we bring with us from over the seas. We’re not conquerors now, are we?
Comment by Ian M — 18 September 2007 @ 2:40 PM
YOu take knowledge personally. It’s unfair for people to criticize from the computer chair about who a person is and what their motivations are. Taking knowledge personally means incorrect information is a personal offense. How could a commitment like this offend? When it comes to sorting out what is correct and incorrect, feelings ARE very much at play, whether we care to admit our weaknesses or not.
Jason, I wouldn’t read and post on this site if it weren’t of the handful, truly, worth reading. From one crazy man to another, I hope Anthropik is the last thing I ever read on the internet if it all goes down.
The great thing is, I don’t agree with your perspective on cities, either, Jason. But I’m not foolish enough to engage you in an intellectual manner; I would have to earn another degree in readind and research.
I think the problem is here there is no way to properly acknowledge Jason because his contribution defies conventional types of recognition.
How empty are the replies of ‘great post’?
I can tell Jason gets excited because it happens when people get close to operating at his level.
Why can’t we all just say and recognize Jason is the smartest person in the room, until it’s been proven otherwise? Because even he would trade all his knowledge for a moment of pure being. AN so, like walking contradictions, we, along with leaders like jason, continue to grasp at that which makes our goals even more elusive.
ON Rewild.info, there was a post quoting Tamarack Song talking about Qualitative skills, skills only a few of us have actually gone out to hone.
I think people should quit worrying and learn to love the crash, so importantant, intelligent people like Jason can use their energy to bring new dreams to life.
In a way, Jason is a medicine man who is stuck serving the will of the tribe, with this vision in the back of his head that gets cooler by the hour. Without people elavating their expectations of a great man beyond the ability to discern the depths of cultural and personal denial of our living slavery, then that is all thsi great tool in our community will be used for. Until people get brave and admit some people can produce any answer to any question, because that is their gift, and start asking new questions, all we will get is the same solution.
I wouldn’t be afraid of Jason and crew if it didn’t mean me changing my bioregion. reading about Penny Scout’s desire return to the mountains of her home helps me realize that becoming a part of the penn crew or oregon crew won’t matter. It’s that painful realization that it takes more than one, and here we all are, still, individuals, slaves, lonely, disaffected, ineffectual…
I wish I could find a way to give my appreciation better than ‘great post, Jason’ but I’m here, you’re there, I hope friends come easier in Pittsburg than they come in Indiana….
Comment by TOnyZ — 18 September 2007 @ 2:59 PM
Honestly, critical thinking is Something any human being at any point in history could have come up with, given the time to think. In it’s most simple form, it’s merely asking “does this make sense? what are the implications of this? do those implications match my experience?” A whole lot of tricks for answering those questions have been developed, and a whole lot of poor practices have been cataloged, and studying them makes you a better critical thinker. But all you really require is a simultaneously curious and skeptical approach to any idea, even (especially) your own.
The powerful have NEVER liked critical thinking. It is a skill that is poorly taught in all mass education. We are told to accept what our leaders tell us. These days we’re told the leaders are great critical thinkers, and we should leave such critical thinking up to them. But we, the commoners, shouldn’t do any critical thinking ourselvs, because we’re not smart enough. And its become a self-fufilling prophecy, because we don’t think critically, we become poor at it.
Will we have occasion to use critical thinking after Civ’s fall? Hell yes. In fact, the more we become responsible for our selves, the more we will benifit from our individual abilities to think critically. Critical thinking is a tool for honing our ideas, which are themselves tools we use to predict real world outcomes. Critical thinkers are better problem solvers.
One last thing I want to point out: don’t confuse academic thinking with critical thinking. Academic thinking can use critical thinking, but it doesn’t always., and it’s not the important distinction. Academic thinking requires that you frame your experience to the existing models. This is not a feature of critical thinking. In many ways critical thinking is at it’s best when you have to fit your model to your experience.
Comment by Andrew Jensen — 18 September 2007 @ 3:23 PM
I never see anything combative about your debate style. I can see how people feel attacked sometimes by how persistent your arguments come out. Maybe sometimes you don’t know when to let things settle on their own accord (for the sake of the person at the other end of the argument) but that’s usually because you see the need for further hashing out the issues.
The problems I see come from people not “getting” your style. You and Scout both seem to have that working against you. I “get” both of your and love both of you for your uniqueness.
Unlike Scout, though, for some reason you come across as not having a sense of humor (I think you know this about yourself) and it may make you seem more combative and less personal. Where as Scout’s sense of humor makes him seem like a douche bag. So, you’re damned whether you do or don’t.
You could try to tone down the degree of your debate style. Maybe that would make you less open to attacks. But I hope you don’t. I think we need the strength and potency of your style, and I hope you don’t change. I think the fact that you responded to Aaron’s comments by arguing the need for your arguments, though, means you won’t ever change a damn thing — and that makes me happy.
Scouts and cartographers, eh? Is that how Peter and Willem came by their respective internet personas? Although, I think I have to agree with Andrew that Ran’s style is a lot more like fantasy cartography than like scouting. Which is probably why I get tired of visiting his site. I love his essay work, but his blogs leave me feeling lost. But I’m definitely glad for both of you.
Comment by Rix — 18 September 2007 @ 3:50 PM
Critical thinking, Academic thinking … when is it just Thinking? Why the distinction? Is it not just an indication of the robust walls we have to throw up when under threat of invasion - digging ourselves in to withstand the assault as Aaron said?
In a pre-conquest culture, what would be the use of a skeptical approach to an idea; where is the need for anything other than curiosity and its satisfaction if you’re not being called to defend your position against missionaries intent on your conversion? When you live in a culture that isn’t based on world-denial, there’s no danger of coming across anything that doesn’t ‘match your experience,’ because your culture is based on, in fact deeply embedded in that experience in the first place.
I don’t think the powerful (or even academics for that matter) ever particularly liked critical thinking. My point was that it’s been grudgingly accepted in those circles since the Enlightenment because of the advances it led to in the efficient exploitation of natural resources to meet the needs of Empire. Einstein was too much of a free thinker to be liked by the establishment, but his work was useful for the production of the atomic bomb.
Comment by Ian M — 18 September 2007 @ 4:53 PM
Remember, monsignor cartographer, “The map is not the territory”
Comment by drew — 18 September 2007 @ 5:12 PM
Like jhereg, I expected to see some bloodshed down in here; like jhereg, I’m pleasantly surprised. First and foremost, thank you to all of you who’ve expressed your support here; it means a good deal to me. Now, specifics…
Amen. What I write about doesn’t necessarily have much correlation with what I’m doing, mind you; I can only write so much about issues in the Allegheny National Forest, far less than I do about said issues. But certainly, we can’t let things like this distact us from the problems at hand.
I can vouch for you, if it’d help. It would be great to see you guys there.
It may not have been your aim, but it was your sole focus. You could have written a general piece about the nature of academic debate, and that might have referenced me as an example, but that would have been a very different piece from the one that you wrote. What you wrote was about me. All of your examples were mine. You mentioned your ideas about academic debate in passing, but from introduction to conclusion, you talked about me far more than you talked about the nature of academic debate.
What you label “combative” are all examples of simply challenging ideas. The “insults” you cite to prove my “destructive” nature are nothing more than questioning people’s ideas. If you want to know how you could mount an argument against critical thought, read your article again. Paradox signals truth, and questioning ideas amounts to combat. Hell, in the comments you even said that I’m your blog’s only troll, because I dare to post disagreements with you.
We’re very much on the same page there, Janene. Just because a debate isn’t personal doesn’t mean it isn’t heated and passionate. Heated, passionate debates are the best kind! But “heated” is not a euphemism for “personal.” Heated debates are fun; when it gets personal, well, even from a viewpoint of pure logic, that’s still an ad hominem fallacy, which is really just the fancy Latin way of saying what I wrote in the article: people are not clusters of ideas, and ideas aren’t the people who espouse them.
I can almost guarantee that you and I have very different ideas about “magic.” I really do need to write a long, feature-worthy article about animism one of these days, but in the meantime, I cannot recommend David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous enough, and if you can’t take the time to read the book, at the very least read the sample chapter online, “The Ecology of Magic.” There’s nothing mystical about magic.
That said, I’m very much with you. I don’t like the mystical strain in primitivism. In fact, my interest in animism began precisely when I began how un-mystical it is, and how it’s really just about basic, pragmatic relationships, rather than any of the “spirituality” we’ve projected onto it. Abram really helped me understand that; that’s when it really clicked for me, the same way Ishmael made the state of our society click for me.
Heh, Giuli said that should be my primary argument in the article.
Excellent point, and one I very much agree with. Civilized ideologies have swung, pendulum-like, between philosophies like the Enlightenment and the Romantics; both exhibit the same, reactionary tendency towards overreaction, both support civilization in their own ways, and both miss the point entirely. We have capacities for both rational and poetic/mythic/intuitive thought, and we’re at our best when we use them both. All this nonsense about which one is better is just that: nonsense. If you actually believe that one is better than the other, get a lobotomy, since that’s what you’re trying to mimic. For the rest of us, I don’t see how cutting ourselves off from half the human experience makes any sense.
It’s been a bad year for my mother’s tomatoes, but a good year for us rewilding. We have a bow now, and I made my first bow drill. Lots of other firsts, too. I don’t see much opportunity for jumping out the window just yet, though, if that’s what you mean. Give it a few more years.
Interesting. I’ve been thinking of becoming a Co-op member for a while now (of course, since I’ll probably be moving out towards the airport soon, that might not be such a good idea anymore; even from Squirrel Hill, I had trouble finding the time to get over there with any kind of regularity). But this, I’ll have to see, we might be able to swing by.
I’d say that tracking demands a great deal of critical thought, and I’ve listened to no small sample of hunter-gatherers reason criticially, so I don’t think it’s a purely civilized phenomenon by any means.
Sure; something as simple as, “The deer went west; I’d thought he’d gone east,” can be an idea you don’t like, because it means you were wrong.
No one’s really capable of thinking very far outside of their cultural idiom … culture constructs our mind in some very powerful ways. For instance, being able to recognize a photograph as being a depiction of the flesh-and-blood person in front of you, is cultural. The way we see and hear is cultural. Even understanding how powerfully culture puts you together doesn’t free yoy from those limitations.
Because they really didn’t have much of a say in the matter. Leaders don’t have that kind of control.
There’s a big difference between a koan and a mystery of faith. The thing about koans is that they only seem paradoxical superficially; when you pry deeper, they make perfect sense, just like your passage from the Tao Te Ching. Compare that to salvation by good works vs. faith, which is just a plain old paradox.
I don’t know if that’s true, but I have lost a lot of time because of uncritical thought in the past, which is why I’m so quick to correct: I want to spare others the things I’ve had to put up with.
I think part of it’s the medium; I figure, if you can’t deal with it now, the comment will always be there for you later. I don’t hesitate to leave a thread and come back later when I’m feeling a little more up to it. Someone who feels like they need to answer immediately, on the other hand, yeah, I can see where that would begin to get sore.
The irony here is—and ask someone who’s met me in the flesh for confirmation—I’m something of a joker in real life. But absolutely none of it translates online. I can’t write comedy. It shocks people who meet me online first, because it’s like night and day; they can’t even tell it’s the same person. But yes, I know what you mean, because whether you have no sense of humor, or just can’t write it, doesn’t make much difference when you’re talking about a purely written medium, eh? I’m certainly not humorless, but my online persona certainly is.
Heh heh heh, yes; I don’t really plan on changing anything any time soon.
Funny; I like his blog much more than his essays. I still think he’s right calling himself a scout, though. He finds new, interesting ideas, but he doesn’t necessarily follow them up very much.
Same reason you have mammal animals and bird animals and reptile animals. Whatever way you think, you’re thinking one way or another. There will always be some modifier that will apply.
I figured that responding would open me up to the charge that I’ve proven his point, but if you think about it for a moment, it’s not much of an argument. That’s really where I started to get pissed off with Aaron’s article: it’s unfalsifiable, because it never makes any solid claim, just insinuations.
Tracking dinner, for one.
Einstein very much was the establishment of his time.
That’s true, but neither are a scout’s reports. We do the best we can.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 18 September 2007 @ 6:14 PM
No No No!
Pleeeeease don’t call Ran a “Scout.” It will ruin my rep! A Scout is someone who goes ahead of their community to gather information that will shape how the community acts. Critical thinking and observations lie at the heart of the Scout; their communities survival depends on it.
Some Scout’s look deeper than others… Those are the ones that survive in the long-run.
Comment by Urban Scout — 18 September 2007 @ 7:47 PM
Oh, Ran makes some excellent observations. That’s why he’s on my daily reading list. Critical thinking, too; he just doesn’t follow it for too long. Like he wrote, “When it gets that technical, I lose interest and move on to something new.” You’re right about the value of scouts, but scouts don’t entirely explore the places they search out and discover, either. You wouldn’t have the time to find all the other new things if you did, would you?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 18 September 2007 @ 8:16 PM
oy vey
i’ll need to respond to a few things, but i’m too fried to do it now
Comment by jhereg — 18 September 2007 @ 8:22 PM
“In a pre-conquest culture, what would be the use of a skeptical approach to an idea; where is the need for anything other than curiosity and its satisfaction if you’re not being called to defend your position against missionaries intent on your conversion?”
Challenging an Idea is something one should do by reflex because an idea can always be improved apon, made more useful. You don’t need competing ideas to test an idea. Hell, you don’t have to abandon an idea just because you’ve found a flaw in it. This is part of what I loved about studying psychology in college; they don’t have a single, workable theory of psychology. They have five or six different theories that are individually internally consistent and are useful about 80% of the time. It’s just that each given theory is better for specific circumstances. So when treating one kind of illness a cognitive model is used, when treating another a pharmacological approach may work better, and when you try to affect a social situation, a behavioral model might be better. Actually, each model has been show to have serious flaws, but each one is still useful.
Simply put, all ideas are wrong. All of them. They are attempts by our puny minds to find patterns in a world immensely more complex than we can comprehend. Ideas are NEVER, EVER true. NEVER. But they can be useful. Critical thinking is the tool we use to determine if our ideas are still useful.
I think I’ve got a decent metaphor (god, I’m metaphoring all over the place to day. What a crutch.) Your ideas are like blades, they are useful tools. Critical thinking is like the whetstone, used to keep your idea blades sharp and ready to use.
Comment by Anonymous — 18 September 2007 @ 9:02 PM
ok, i don’t think it should wait.
first off, i’d like to go on the record as enjoying all 3 blogs this circles around (Ran’s, Jason’s/Anthropik, & Aaron’s/VillagBlog). i like them for very, very different reasons, but I like them nonetheless….
so, having said that, i hope no one takes the following too personally.
Ran plays with loopy logic, but he’s plenty capable of critical thought and uses it regularly, that he finds and espouses odd ideas is a strength, not a weakness. if that strength comes at the loss of not wanting to follow thru, ok, so what?
Jason’s forte is, obviously, rigorously working thru and debating various facets of an issue. At times, the style which he uses to do this approximates “arguing like a seal”. It’s a good thing, but it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. Still, I hope he doesn’t stop.
Aaron’s prime concerns are family, and, being a father, that’s obviously a big shared concern for me as well. But, from a more general point of view, Aaron seems to look at a lot of these issues from an entirely different perspective altogether; less for the purpose of attaining closure (which is an aspect he shares w/ Ran) than for the purpose of deeper personal and interpersonal understanding. I think it’s from this that his entry stems. (And from this that i’m posting this comment.)
So, you’re thinking, great, everything’s hunky-dory, then, right? Sure, except it isn’t really. I’m not a big one for confrontation, either, but I’d also really hate for something to go overlooked here. Picking up with the Scout/Cartographer metaphor, it seems to me that the sore point is with the switch off (ie, timing). I find myself wondering if Aaron would be more comfortable with at least some aspects of Jason’s debate style, if Scouts (not the Scouts, mind) had a little more time to muddle thru the possibilities, before a Cartographer comes along to run it thru the wringer.
My larger point is that we are, or at least, we should be, acting as much as we can as a community. That doesn’t mean letting thinking go unchallenged, but it also means we should make as much effort as possible to head off both posts such as Aaron’s & Jason’s “Truth & Paradox” entries. For my part, I’ve been thinking I should point out the possibility of a disagreement like this for some time, but I didn’t want to risk a full on confrontation about it. In hindsight, I really have to wonder if this could have all been addressed much more personably before we arrived on the verge of a full on “flame war”. Tho’, I should reiterate that I’m thrilled with the amount of retraint shown here. I wasn’t kidding about the bloodshed.
One last disclosure:
I’m not trying to discourage disagreements, but no one gains anything from a “flame war”, which this could have escalated to, and as it is, some feelings have obviously been “bruised” a bit. Surely we can find better ways to disagree? Surely we can find better ways to resolve conflicts?
Re: critical thinking & primitive cultures-> of course they used critical thinking. critical thinking is regularly used for problem solving, what, you don’t think primitive people had problems…? They should be so lucky….
Comment by jhereg — 18 September 2007 @ 9:12 PM
Jason is currently pushing the line that I deliberately set out to do him harm. I certainly knowingly did him harm but it was in the service of connecting a number of issues together. It was also done, as I said to break a kind of spell I was feeling about daring to criticise Jason in public.
To insist that my intention was simply to do harm (without reason) represents a gross misrepresentation of me as a person. Of course if I want to start this kind of debate I should be prepared to be bruised myself but it was still with an incredible sensation of relief that I read jhereg’s comments above. After Jason’s second insistence about my supposed intentions I felt unexpectedly moved to find someone who understands where I’m coming from. Thankyou. I guess I’m not the only person who feels misunderstood right now.
Lastly, for those who haven’t seen it the troll comment Jason referred to above was a joke - as evidenced by the little smiley face that appeared immediately after it.
Comment by Aaron — 18 September 2007 @ 9:54 PM
I should add that I estimated that I would only do minor harm. I never guessed that I would give Jason cause to consider quitting this site and needless to say I wouldn’t have done so if I had forseen that.
Comment by Aaron — 19 September 2007 @ 12:18 AM
Yinz goofballs… Enough assuming, projecting, and defending unknown unknowns… Try getting together and tracking each other in the flesh for awhile - and please bring some empathy and respect. Then, maybe, you can distinguish a bit between the person and the ideas, and then have at it. Otherwise, these intertubes are mostly murky, deep, echoooo holes…
—-
Oh, and slapping a winky smiley face on a dig - that’s falls under the category of: “Fuck You! just kidding“. How civilized…
-Jim
Comment by JCamasto — 19 September 2007 @ 12:28 AM
Oh I don’t know about that, I got a pretty good laugh from that video you linked to at Tim & Sally’s blog.
For whatever its worth — I’m sure I’ve lost more than a few debates here at the Anthropik comments, but I’ve never felt personally attacked or diminished by it. I come away from all the debates here — whether I participated or not, whether I lose, whether I inadvertently end up making some novel point, or whatever — with a greater sense of clarity about the world and my relationship to it. I can more clearly identify what I don’t know, why I disagree when I do, various underlying assumptions I have, among many other things.
Additionally, Anthropik has been utterly critical for me in forming something resembling a worldview that includes the specter of collapse. Because of the debates here, particularly those involving Greer’s work, I have been able to develop a rough sketch of a story, a myth even, that satisfies my own need for a spiritual context to collapse. Ishmael’s proposed myth is good but it has a glaring hole I can’t accept; I’ve needed to figure one out for myself and Anthropik has been instrumental in providing the raw materials for that project. I personally am deeply grateful for that.
Comment by Paula — 19 September 2007 @ 3:19 AM
I’m glad it helped.
However, I want to try to be very clear about this: I’m not laying the blame at Jason’s feet (at least not solely at his feet). Neither am I laying it solely at your feet. I’m not even laying it at your combined feet. Let’s face it, there’s a circle of blogs and forums and misc people who have very similar goals. We disagree a lot, but that’s not a problem. What is a problem is when, for whatever reason, we end up pushing away one or more allies. In this light, I’m saying that everyone who contributes openly and honestly in this “neighborhood” should share the blame on any internal breakdown. I’ve been debating about taking some of these issue to people privately (which, imo, is a perfectly acceptable practice, esp if you want to work out “issues”). In my hubris, I think I might have been able to avoid, or at least, soften some this had I done so. Too late now, but I’m refusing to let the opportunity to raise the bar on how we relate to one another pass me by. As TonyZ said, it’s these qualitative skills that we need most, so… here we are, what are we going to do? How should we resolve this? Because, I’m not convinced that it’s been suitably resolved.
Comment by jhereg — 19 September 2007 @ 8:57 AM
On how not to be a rewilding poseur:
Well, this is how I do it. The only electricity I use is for lights, and charging my cell phone. I don’t use my refridgerator, I don’t own a television, and I only use the internet at the community center. I play music with my friends, and sometimes I break out the CD player.
Am I now less of a poseur?
Every weekend, almost everyday, I’m leading a friend or ten around one of the dozens of awesome places we have to visit in the Wabash Valley. If the internet was my second home, as it once was, I’d have a blog, I’m sure of all of it. Recently, I’ve made lambic wines of berries and grapes. I threw my knife at a rabbit, stunned it, then slit it’s throat in front of what I ‘thought’ were some of my more hardcore friends. Right there in dobbs park, we skinned a rabbit and roasted it. A few bits of meat were perfect for catching a few catfish, and we had an entire meal last thursday, consiting of cress salad with grapes, pawpaws, and cooked chantrelles (cooked with the little rabbit fat we had and fish skin made a great dressing).
Now am I less of a poseur?
I just sent out a proposal to create a community gardening program that would eventually gives us the materials we need to create Stametsian models of habitat restoration. Uh-oh, now am I more of a poseur?
I’m in the middle of doing temp work for the habitat for humanity affiliate to pay for my house, am I even less rewild now, fully a poseur?
What’s my bottom line?
I don’t care. I know my lifestyle helps me meet the Heinlein definition of what a human being is. I don’t measure myself against snide, intertube dweebs who must commit several logical fallacies in order to point out my few. I’m not impressed my anything clever, even a coyote knows that clever is for stories and legends, not ways of life.
To enter into the domain of ‘rewilding’ is to recognize you have one foot in, and one foot out. Anyone who doesn’t see that, perhaps, aren’t ready to take one foot out yet.
Comment by TonyZ — 19 September 2007 @ 10:00 AM
Jason,
I think you overreacted a bit on this one. There were maybe three sentences in the entire post that could be construed as attacking/insulting and even then it’s up to you to become offended.
I do agree with you that the appearance of paradox indicates a place to explore, a way to finetune what we know or don’t know. And the idea that truth has the appearance of paradox is pretty sloppy thinking.
Also, debate is adversarial. What Aaron wants isn’t debate he wants affirmation.
Finally, for Ian:
The whole point of that verse from the Tao te ching is that the truth seems paradoxical, but isn’t. If you examine the paradoxical truth you find out that it is either not true, or not a paradox.
JimFive
Comment by JimFive — 19 September 2007 @ 10:59 AM
I’m so glad to hear this Jason, as I enjoy your site and has made me think more than a few times, particularly your Metafilter debates. Have you considered writing an Anthropik FAQ based on those? I often find your responses there more accessible to people who may question civilization and technology (not to say I don’t enjoy the articles here, they are great!). Maybe you can change your username there to “anthropikdotcom”!
Glad you are keeping up the Anthropik Project..
Peace,
APerson
Comment by APerson — 19 September 2007 @ 11:12 AM
Difficult issues, I agree. But working on this is important, I think.
Jason, I feel tremendous respect for you, and thank you for all your writing, and the strongly coherent way in which you articulate ideas. Like Urban Scout, I get very exciting coming across many of your pieces, and hope you continue to explore issues in this format.
That said, I deeply understand Aaron’s perepective, amd jhereg’s. I do find it difficult to argue with you online, and I think it is largely because you are so knowledgeable and forceful in your argumentation. Despite the fact that we are not our ideas, there is a great ego attachment and emotional investment in them, andmany of us do feel personally attacked when this happens. That’s a bigger cultural issues, I think, having to do with us being raised in horrifically violent ways (if not physically), and not learning to be self-confident and not learning to trust in ourselves, and thus always pining for other’s approval. One of the ways we are approved by others is through our worldviews, and when that’s shot down, it can be hard to remember that we are not the ideas. This isn’t your fault, nor your creation, and insofar as this is not the case for you, I congratulate and commend you.
That said, in building community, I think empathy is a key, and must be factored in. I understand that when you argue with your friends and family, the heated-ness of it is no indication of your affection for them, and you in fact expect things to be heated. I want to say that I commend you as well for the consistency that you demonstrate, and the fact that you have always made it clear to me whenever weve disagreed over the tubes here that this in no way reflected animosity toward me. Thank you so much for that.
Back to empathy- I think you, Jason, are accustomed to interacting heatedly when debating an issue with others, and this is simply extended online. That’s fair, but not everyone is, and I think you may do well to consider that not everyone shares your method of argumentation or discussion, and maybe a less-heated interaction would be desirable in some circumstances. One way of looking at this is: your argumentation compels everyone else to accomodate it, or feel wounded. Their feelings aren’t your fault, but your words do provide the impetus. Other people who have less heated means of working our disagreements may end up feeling like their needs, in terms of how they want to work this out, are being ignored, and coupled with feeling overwhelmed by information, an dmaybe being proven ‘wrong,’ engenders wounded feelings. If you do not want to endgender those feelings, you might feel things out a bit more, and try to accomodate them in some way, and hash out disagreements less heatedly.
But to speak from the other side of my mouth a bit, this is your site, and your life, and you of course should make the decisions that work best for you, and I don’t mean to badger you into doing something against your will.
I grew up with a bipolar parent, and was continually given the opportunity to hone my epathic skills, and to accomodate others. Now, I work on doing this in a way that reasonable and respectful of myself, but that’s my personal work. I bring it up only because I think it’s a valuable skill; feeling others out, seeing how best they’re likely to respond, and then following through with that. Because for me, when I argue with someone over an issue, my main concern is encouraging a change in their behavior or thought process, not in making them feel bad, whether or not they *should* feel bad. I mentioned in my blog some months ago, a section of the Bushido, the Samurai Code, which said that when correcting another, great pains should be taken to correct them in such a way that they may retain face. The fact that we all may not have a reason to lose face when we lose an argument doesn’t change the fact that many of us do, however much we may be working on it. And to those of us who don’t feel like we lose face after losing an argument, like you and your family Jason, many kudos on your strong self-confidence. And I say this without malice or irony.
I think that accomodating others to the greatest degree possible while still retaining one’s own self-respect and dignity (without bending over backward and being taken advantage of), will be a vital skill as we’re rebuilding our tribes.
I say this humbly, and hope it is received in kind.
Comment by Archangel — 19 September 2007 @ 11:42 AM
Okay, that didn’t occur to me. Counter to my earlier protestations it seems like I’ll need another modifier to describe the distinction I’m trying to make - there’s usually a point in there amidst all the jumble … I’ll get back to you with something more robust
(By the way, I hope it was clear that I wasn’t trying to make indigenous peoples out to be inferior beings - ‘they are as trusting children’ & all the other false dominator justifications.)
Really? I thought that’s what we were doing here, and quite successfully at that, too.
How about burning heretics at the stake then - isn’t that a fairly strong dissuasion for the would-be critical thinker? Perhaps Leonardo Da Vinci would’ve been a better example than Einstein, having to perform his experiments on the human body in secret and all that. My understanding of the latter’s life is that he was only able to develop his ideas properly while working in that patent office, away from the meddling influence of the universities whose methods he had criticised.
Then when he became the establishment … my argument starts to break down (he started to dislike himself??) ! I guess what I’m trying to say is that had he gone through all the proper channels we wouldn’t know him for half as many things as we do today, ie the function of academia is to clamp down on creativity and only harness what pathetic remnants that can be useful for reinforcing the status quo.
Incidentally, I wasn’t trying to ‘charge’ you with anything with my ‘digging in’ comment, just picking up on something Aaron said that seemed to make sense, irrespective of whether it was aimed specifically at you (and I didn’t think that particular bit was). My own university experience was predominantly one of being handed down the Accepted Truths which I was licensed only to reproduce in my own way. As soon as I began to insert my own slant on a topic, I was immediately required to back it up with all the authoritative sources that would’ve been redundant if I was merely parroting things that everybody already knew. In an environment hostile to new ideas you have to ‘dig in to withstand the assault’ in a way that would be unnecessary if creative thinking were met in a spirit of mutual, friendly exploration.
As for truths that only carry a slim veil of paradox, I wasn’t sure we were on the same page, so I got Lao Tzu to find out for me. I’m glad to see that we are
Comment by Ian M — 19 September 2007 @ 2:41 PM
“Interesting. Where you going with this, Ikea boy?”
(Sorry, I was just channelling Tyler Durden there too strongly to leave it unsaid…)
Is there something solid at the end of this, maybe? A gritty proposal that we can take under consideration?
Nobody’s challenged you about it except me. Your comments are all positive, and I haven’t chimed in once. But, as is my way, let’s try to make this a little more concrete, so we can get past what I feel vs. what you feel; we could go back and forth with that forever, and never get anywhere. Let’s count paragraphs.
Paragraph #2: “It also occurred to me that we’ve been this way before, with Jason behaving in a relatively rude manner and the other party extending him some grace so the debate can continue.”
Paragraph #3: Me insulting Toby Hemenway
Paragraphs #4-5: More on me insulting Toby Hemenway
Paragraphs #6-9: How unreasonable I am about cities
Paragraphs #10-13: How I fight even when we’re really agreed
Paragraph #16: “In all honesty I don’t think that Jason values the relationship as much as the need to win a debate”
Paragraphs #17-21: About academic debate in general, not about me
Paragraph #22: “a feeling of trepidation every time I visit the Anthropik site”
Paragraphs #23-25: Returning to general question of academic debate
Paragraphs #26-27: You don’t want to pick a fight
Paragraph #28: Conclusion.
So, in a 28-paragraph article, only 9 paragraphs actually address what you say is the article’s primary topic. You spend 14 paragraphs talking about me.
It may be that you set out to write an article on the general question of academic debate, and not aimed at attacked me, but if so, you failed. The article that you wrote apparently has little relationship with the article you intended to write. The fact that you spend almost twice as much time denigrating me than discussing what’s supposedly your primary topic certainly makes me wonder how your stated intentions could possibly align with the article you actually wrote, but I don’t know what your intentions might have been. All I know is what you wrote, and what you wrote dealt very little with the nature of academic debate. It was too busy coming after me to ever get to anything that general.
Like I said, I have no idea what your intentions were. Frankly, I don’t really care what your intentions were. Intentions are meaningless. It’s what you do that matters. Nobody really cares what my intentions are, either; it’s what I do that matters. Whatever your intentions might have been in writing the article, really doesn’t matter. The article you wrote doesn’t deal with the nature of academic debate. It’s just an attack, and a rather sophistic one at that.
Ah, my apologies then. I didn’t get your joke. From the article preceding it, I considered it entirely possible that you considered my comments trolling, since they brought all that unpleasant business of disagreement and critical thought.
Don’t blame yourself too much; you were ultimately just one of the parties that were breaking me down. The other dozen or so doing much the same at the exact same time didn’t help, either. I doubt any one of you could’ve brought me to that point all on your own, but it all happened within a short window, so it got to be a little much.
Thank you; that’s how I feel, too, including the sense that I’ve probably “lost” more than I’ve “won,” if “winning” means my idea prevails. But I think that “winning” means a lot more when it means, “I learned something new and became sharper and stronger,” by which definition, I always win the debates around here.
Wow. Thank you. I can hardly believe we’ve been able to do something that good, but it’s really good to hear that.
There were 14 paragraphs dedicated to talking about me, out of a 28-paragraph article. That’s half of the whole article, and the other half was about describing “my problem.” I may have overreacted, but “maybe three sentences in the entire post” is just flat wrong.
We all need affirmation sometimes, sure. But we also need to settle down and do some hard work sometimes, too. Critical thought and debate included.
Well, that’s rather what the Thirty Theses are.
I would say, then, that that is where the problem lies, not in debating our ideas, but in how we invest our ego in them. That’s also what makes us stubborn and unwilling to learn. Investing our ego in our ideas is a huge problem on many levels, and I’d say that’s what needs to be corrected, not the debate.
I bolded the part that I agree with 100%.
I can certainly see that, and we seem to be very much on the same page for much of this, so given all that, don’t you think it would be better if we raised the bar a bit? I don’t pull back online on principle. We need more places for free and open debate. This place may not be the greatest place to learn that separation in the first place, but I think it’s invaluable for those who do so.
I’m really not too concerned with how people feel when they walk away from this site. There are people I enjoy talking to online, but very few I’d say I have a real relationship with. Building your relationships and communities is vital, but that’s not what’s going on here. Most people who post here don’t know each other. This website isn’t a community, and it never really will be. It’s a tool, a place to learn and share. So the heat may not be conducive to making a community here, but this was never going to be a community; it is conducive to learning, though, and that’s what this place is about.
It absolutely is, and I’m not unaccomplished with it. But I’m not sure it always applies.
Which is a good way to approach it with people sitting next to you. But online, there are hundreds of lurkers for every speaker, and everything you say is preserved for posterity. You have to worry about more than just the thoughts and feelings of the person you’re talking to; you have to consider the impact your words and reactions have on the huge, silent audience listening in. So if somebody starts talking about some nonsense like how Ashkenazi Jews are genetically more civilized, you can’t try to understand them and address their underlying issues; that kind of treatment makes it seem like they made a reasonable statement, maybe incorrect, but still reasonable enough to warrant a calm, respectful debate. That’s the kind of ambience that next makes it reasonable to think of burning down synagogues. You can’t try understanding statements like that online; you have to cut them down ruthlessly, and make it clear that such suggestions aren’t reasonable, or even tolerable. Because you have to worry about more than just the person you’re talking to: there’s that whole big, silent audience you have to worry about.
Heh, yeah, I always hated that strain in Japanese culture.
Absolutely, but might I suggest, that’s something different from a website, no?
We’re still very much more in our idiom than out of it.
Not really. They kept doing it nonetheless, didn’t they? Trying to swat all the examples never makes an effective way to deal with a trend.
Except this isn’t true. A little time actually in academia reveals that. The best way to get fame and fortune in academia is to be creative. But it’s also important to be right, because however creative the idea is, there’s no points unless it’s right, and because there’s so much competition to be the most creative, there’s also a feeding frenzy to find anything that might be wrong, because they’ll be damned if they’ll see their rivals succeed first. All in all, I think it’s a fairly admirable way of discovering truth.
Interesting. That was nothing like my university experience. Sure, I had to back up what I had to say, but if I could do that, the more innovative the better.
Isn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t you always have to back up what you say?
I dunno, sounds like an environment quite friendly to new ideas. It just asks for some rigor. A new wrong idea doesn’t really help anyone, does it?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 September 2007 @ 6:18 PM
Hey Jason,
Thanks for your response. I hear you very much, and hadn’t been differentiating in my mind the alleged online ‘community’ and a face-to-face one. Certainly with this site, as popular as it is, there’s a lot of silent readers who you’re speaking to as well. I’m not used to that, and wasn’t paying much mind to it. But you’re certainly right- this isn’t necessarily the place for friendship building, though it may happen incidentally. And now that I understand that, the tenor makes a great deal more sense. This is a space specifically reserved for debate and heatedness, and I, and others maybe as well, erroneously saw this behavior as indicative of face to face behavior. It’s not- I get it now.
Also, yeah, we do need to work collectively on changing the culture that causes people to invest their egos into ideas, and hey that’s what we’re doing right? I see that certainly as a part of rewilding.
Coolio man- I’m feeling good.
Comment by Archangel — 19 September 2007 @ 8:59 PM
Good.
Now email me, or if you ever can make it to one of those events we try to organize, and you’ll see a lot more effort put into genuine relationships. 
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 September 2007 @ 9:03 PM
Oh, also- I sort of was thinking about this recently, and saw the openness and acceptance of new ideas, versus the critical-mindedness and skepticism of them as akin to behavior within the tribe, and outside the tribe. Anyone interested in my musings can check it out here: here.
Comment by Archangel — 19 September 2007 @ 9:05 PM
This is getting ridiculous. You’ve cited 14 paragraphs that are supposed to be about you. Certainly some of them are whilst other are at best partially about you, (or to be precise, your debating style). But then there are others that have virtually nothing to do with you and to break it down like that and declare that 14 of 23 parts were about you and only 9 weren’t is something of a distortion - but for what pupose I’m not sure.
I totally agree that significant parts of the piece were about your debating style - no question. Indeed I consicously set out to discuss that issue - purely for it’s own sake but also for how it related to issues of the academic approach, issues of community, the nature of truth and paradox and whether there might be another way to do all this (as well as to discover what would happen when I threw all those issues into the pot together). However, given that I said that I deliberately chose to talk about your
debating style in the actual posting I’m really not sure what you’re trying to prove or why I keep feeling the need to explain this over and over again.
You accuse me of mounting a sophisticated attack but I’ve got nothing on you. Dealing with you is like dealing with a someone who’s got a PR company behind them because you seem to use a lot of the same techniques. You refuse to yield any ground on any points whatsoever. You attempt to monopolise certain areas of high ground and you manage to cast aspertions on me without ever doing so in a direct way.
The critical thinking issue is a good example of occupying the high ground - through a mix of direct and indirect comments you have asserted that you are the only person involved who uses criticial thinking and that I (amongst others) do not. Obviously if I am not a critical thinker then anything I say can be considered suspect. The term is used like a badge of honour as if critical thinkers are a special class of human being and also as if a person who thinks creatively or in a searching way can not have access to the technique. Clearly I focus on doing things in a searching way but to imply that there is no critical thought involved in the process is laughable.
As for casting aspertions. In your article above you don’t directly call me infantile or juvenile but instead use the terms in a way that is very much connected to me, or at least to my thought processes. In fact you seem to be careful to never direct anything at me personally.
I actually find it quite upsetting that I am having to spend so much time defending my character. You keep insisting that I spent most of the article
denigrating you (for no acknowledged reason) when it’s patently obvious that I only ever discussed your debating style (I guess you think this defames your character in some way but you haven’t said so out loud) I can only conclude that you are pushing the line that I deliberately set out to denigrate you
personally and that everything else in the article is incidental in order to make me look worse than I am. To be honest I’m finding it pretty unpleasant and quite overwhelming.
All this experience has done is confirm for me in a very personal way that what I wrote about your debating style was correct but since I can see that
this will never end I’m just going to throw in the towel in this forum. You
can have the last say.
Comment by Aaron — 20 September 2007 @ 5:21 AM
How about: Everyone has to go through their own process(es) to arrive at a conclusion?
and:
We can help or hinder those processes either knowingly or unknowingly.
A big part of the appeal of a blog is the wide audience (particularly evidenced by the high rate of lurkers).
Does this mean we ignore individual needs?
Does this mean we try to maximize the benefit for the unspoken majority?
What aspect (if any) of providing clear statements that have been subjected to a high degree of critical thought excludes making clear statements of support, even of those who disagree?
I don’t have a blog. You and many others do. I’ll let each of you make your own decisions with no further commentary from me.
Comment by jhereg — 20 September 2007 @ 8:58 AM
Jason,
I counted the paragraph’s slightly differently as I didn’t include quoted sections as separate paragraphs. However the count as I see it is:
Para 2
Jason behaved rudely
Para 3
If you said his thinking is dodgy, then you said it, that’s not an attack on you.
Para 4-5
Don’t see that it’s about you AT ALL. Seems to be about a debating style that is perceived to shut down opposition.
Para 6-9
The arguement over the definition of city isn’t important let’s move on.
Para 8-10(with quotes)
Also not about you. Discusses how the debate format hides commonality among disparate views.
Para 12
Jason values the win more than the relationship and posts really long responses.
Para 17
Feeling of trepidation when I visit Anthropik. That’s not about you, that’s about Aaron.
Para 21
Recognition that this might be seen as an attack.
Para 22
Ten years ago I was like that
So I see out of 23 paragraphs about 3 items (Para 2, 12, 22) that could be conceived as an attack.
In addition there is the comment about you being a troll which was also uncalled for.
JimFive
Comment by JimFive — 20 September 2007 @ 1:20 PM
I agree, Aaron, this is getting ridiculous. Anyone can read your article and see what you wrote, how can we seriously be here arguing over what it says? It’s right there, literally in black and white!
I think you’re the one trying to distort things here, Aaron. A paragraph is supposed to be a complete thought, right? Your article had 28 complete thoughts. 14 of those thoughts were about me. 9 were about your supposed subject. The remaining 5 dealt with other subjects, like Scott Peck (he had 2). As I said, this is all right there for anyone to read, so this is somewhat ridiculous for you to come here and pretend that you wrote something other than what you wrote.
No, not sophisticated, sophistic. As in Sophistry. Meaning, “deceptively subtle reasoning or argumentation; an argument used to deceive.” The Greek Sophists taught that the art of argumentation was more important than the substance, and would use very flowery and even superficially convincing arguments to support vapid and ultimately empty ideas. I’m saying that your attack feels very convincing at first, but that’s deceptive, an element added on because there is no substance to it. It’s sophistry.
I’ve dealt with PR companies. You obviously have not. PR companies manipulate emotions (like your piece). All I have on my side is evidence. I yield ground when I’m wrong. I don’t attempt to monopolise the high ground; those are just the points I don’t concede, because I don’t have to, because I’m right. See, that’s the thing about not being a Sophist: the style of argument doesn’t matter nearly so much, as whether the argument is true.
Your article was a diatribe against critical thinking. You drew that line, not me. Your article’s about how we shouldn’t question or disagree; “how would it be if the debate could be effective without having to be so damned ‘robust’.” And of course:
“It” being disagreement. Critical thinking. I didn’t draw those lines, you did. The only thing you spent any time talking about in your article besides how destructive I am, is how we shouldn’t waste so much time and energy disagreeing and thinking critically, being so “robust.”
That’s because you have very little to do with it. You wrote an article, and I’ve responded to it. That’s not casting aspersions, that’s precisely the basic level of maturity I was talking about. I have no idea what your intentions or feelings might have been, and frankly, they’re irrelevant. Whatever went into creating the article no longer matters; the article now exists, and it is what it is, regardless of what emotions or intentions you brought to its creation. I have no idea if you really are as juvenile as the article would have us believe; all I know is that the article you wrote takes immense immaturity as an unspoken assumption. That’s not an aspersion, that’s precisely the ability to distinguish between a person and their ideas that I was talking about. And it also highlights the importance of that: I have no idea what your intentions were, and I would be off-base trying to pontificate about them. But the article exists. It isn’t you. And there’s a great deal that I can say about it, because everything that it is is available there for anyone to see. It has no unknown intentions or emotions; it is simply what you see.
You don’t. No one ever said a word about your character, so why would you have to defend it? It’s not an issue. The real question is, why do you think it is, when nobody’s even mentioned it except you? The only person here talking about your character is you. I’m certainly not talking about your character. I’ve said repeatedly and consistently that your character could hardly be more irrelevant. I’m talking about your article. Your character is not your article, is it?
It’s objectively true that you spent most of the article denigrating me. This isn’t a matter of opinion; you can go and count it up. As for reason, why, who can say except you? More importantly, why does it matter? For whatever reasons you decided to write that article, you wrote it, and the article that you wrote is mostly an attack on me. There’s no arguing that.
You said a lot more than just about my debating style. You told me how I need to grow up like you did; you told me how destructive I am; you told me how my constant rudeness requires everyone to accomodate me; you said I care more about winning a debate online than my friends. You really said very little about my debating style; you talked about how much I insult people by disagreeing with them, and how destructive I am, etc., but very little about debating style at all. Although, given that you’re now insisting that me looking critically at your article constitutes a sustained attack on your character, I can certainly understand better why you made the case that by disagreeing with Toby or Ran, that I insulted them and acted rudely towards them.
Well, if you’re really looking at it through such a self-obsessed lens, then I imagine you would find it unpleasant and overwhelming. But I never said anything about your intentions or about you. I’ve made that quite clear, even explicitly so, no small number of times now. Yet here you are, still insisting that it’s all about you.
Usually nothing, and I usually don’t come out trying to “bury” people I disagree with, either. That applies mostly when someone starts saying really crazy stuff, like how Ashkenazi Jews are genetically more civilized, things like that.
JimFive, I said the article as a whole was an attack. The count was simply of those paragraphs talking about me, not necessarily just those attacking me.
Para. 4-5, from “While it was true that Toby’s initial argument…” to “…for a few generations at least,” is offered to show how reasonable the ideas offered were, before knocked down by big, mean Jason. That’s the only relevance they have to the article.
Para. 6-9 hops on over to how unreasonable I am about cities. Para. 17 is a good piece of sophistry: while you could waffle and say it’s about Aaron and not me, he still gets his chance to communicate how destructive Anthropik is, because of me.
Is every paragraph an attack? No. Many paragraphs are needed in support, to build up to the attack. But the attack is the major theme in the article; everything else works around that and supports it. The only real point it makes is that I’m a bad guy.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 September 2007 @ 5:30 PM
Working on something…
In the meantime:
Granted, but it can’t have been entirely ineffective or else they wouldn’t have kept on with it for so long. What interests me is why they stopped. Was it because there were too many examples to swat after a time, or was it because they saw advantage in allowing the pendulum to swing the other way (as it were)? It’s my understanding that Power never relinquishes it’s ‘hold’ without the force of adverse circumstances, unless of course it can see some way to get more power in the process.
This sounds like the first of our culture’s misguided projections onto Darwinism. It’s a way of getting at the truth, for sure, but I’d go for ‘a ruthless way to extirpate’ rather than ‘an admirable way of discovering’ truth. But that’s just my point of view. A mistake you spoke about, with reference to Jane Goodall, was the one of observing subjects into whose company the researcher has just introduced a concentrated material (edible) prize, and calling the subsequent behaviour ‘natural’. Without always having to keep one eye on the prize (fame, fortune, funding) how much more … civilised the whole process of truth discovery might be!
Comment by Ian M — 20 September 2007 @ 5:46 PM
Striking when the iron’s cold, I know, but see here for what was too long to clog up this page.
Everything ok? I’ve had bandwidth error messages from here for a week or more.
Comment by Ian M — 1 October 2007 @ 7:37 AM
We’ve been having some issues with our web host.
Thanks for the link; I disagree strongly, but I left my comment about that on your post.
As for your comment before that, notice that Jane Goodall’s error was that she wasn’t academic enough, and the problem was caught by another academic. Academia embraces rigor in order to control for our assumptions, but because academics are cultural beings, that’s always an ongoing process. You get mistakes: like Jane Goodall’s bananas, or Darwin’s assumptions about the Hobbesian state of nature. But so long as you maintain your commitment to academia, it corrects its own mistakes: Marshall Sahlins, Richard Lee and others corrected Hobbes’ mistakes about primitive life, and Margaret Power corrected Jane Goodall’s oversight (which Jane Goodall herself has admitted to). The failures of academia are those places where it was insufficiently rigorous; the cure for this is not abandoning the rigorous pursuit of truth, but demanding greater rigor!
Comment by Jason Godesky — 1 October 2007 @ 4:47 PM
Well, though I was expecting some interesting obstacles to be thrown up, I thought we’d have more to agree on than that… Give me a while to get my bridge-building equipment together
I take your point about academia’s self-righting mechanisms which have an undeniable elegance to them, but I brought up Jane Goodall to focus on her experiment as analogous to the world of rigorous truth pursuit you describe. To paraphrase slightly from the Theodore Kemper review you quoted:
I always scoff at myself for coming up with this criticism because it sounds like my mother, but I have trouble entirely shaking it off, so feel free to follow suit: It’s just not a very nice way of going about things.
It’s seeming more likely that mine was a Bad Apple experience, which makes me less qualified than I originally thought to speak on the subject of academia as a consistent whole (although the experience remains the way I described - I wasn’t imagining things). So, back to the drawing board…
I’ll dig up the passage I’m thinking of from Jeff Schmidt’s Disciplined Minds and see what else I come with after brooding on the subject for a couple more days.
Thanks for getting back to me.
Oh, the Pirsig anecdote probably was true, as he did in fact study philosophy in Chicago. The professor was one Richard Mckeon (wiki). I never heard of him - maybe things have changed since those days?
Comment by Ian M — 2 October 2007 @ 2:59 PM
I don’t think the chimpanzee comparison really follows, because knowledge can’t be controlled the way food can. Anyone with the will and the intelligence to do so can begin dispensing their knowledge at will, and there’s really very little anyone can do to stop them. Sure, if challenged, if they don’t actually have knowledge, but merely like being thought of as knowledgeable, then that challenge will illustrate that. But if they actually have that knowledge, they can stand up to the challenge. This site is a case in point.
I thought Pirsig fictionalized a great deal of his life story, so I thought his portrayal of his professor, while ostensibly based in real life, still owed more to fiction than reality, similar to how Plato’s Socrates shares the name, face and history of a historical person, but acts in Plato’s work as an essentially fictional character for voicing Plato’s philosophy. Philosophers love that kind of fiction, in general, so I understood Pirsig to be indulging in a time-honored philosophical tradition.
That said, all of this has prompted me to give some thought to the nature of personal experience vs. academic knowledge. Ultimately, personal experience is all that really matters. All my “book learnin’” isn’t worth a hobo nickel, because of all the experience that goes into a hobo nickel. That said, personal experience is also deeply personal. We have a fine example right here: you and I have had downright opposite experiences with academia, it seems. So how do you bridge that gap?
That, I think, is where something like academia comes in. Academia doesn’t deal with personal experience, because personal experience only matters to the person who experienced it, and the goal of academia is to give us a base of shared knowledge, so that we can relate to one another. That’s why it needs to be rigorous, and why it needs to be built up through challenge, thesis and antithesis. It’s not nice, no, but it’s really too important to allow it to be sidetracked over niceties.
I’d agree that our current fascination with science has blinded us to the importance of our own, personal experience, but as I said at the beginning of this article, every reactionary movement has a tendency to swing too far. Not only did the Enlightenment go much too far in denying the importance of personal experience, but we are at risk of going too far in the opposite direction if we start to think that just because we can see it being taken too far, that a common ground of discourse rigorously constructed and open to challenge, is a bad thing, or even an unnecessary thing.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 October 2007 @ 4:22 PM
How on earth did I miss all this excitement?! I just now read this.
Huzzah for critical thought! Huzzah for Jason!
Anyway, y’all rock. You know it. We know it.
p.s. I do have to say though…Cartographers and Scouts? Somebody trying to cop the P-town style? Waitaminute…P-town…P-burgh…burgh=town….
nah. coincidence.
Comment by Willem — 3 October 2007 @ 1:43 AM
Knowledge can’t be controlled the way that food can, but it can be steered by those who have control over the rewards in whatever direction they see fit. A premium can be placed on the kind of knowledge a culture values. An example that Schmidt picks up on is the funding of the scientific community in the US by military organisations. The chimps at work in those labs think they’re out gathering bananas just like their wild ancestors, whereas they’re in fact clamouring for the attention of an artificial feeder. (The scientists think they’re still engaged in the noble pursuit of truth, but once they stray down an avenue that isn’t valued by their employers the money stops coming in and they can’t continue.)
Yes, there’s nothing to stop anyone with the will and intelligence from dispensing their knowledge - it’s just that they’ll face heavy selection pressures against them if they’re looking for acceptance (or a job) in the mainstream. Like Ishmael, they are forced to howl in the desert until someone hears them. Isn’t that where the ideas and innovations most prized by academics have traditionally come from? And yet they always take so long to filter through and effect the changes they imply. Truth plays second fiddle
Ok, I thought Pirsig might not have been fictionalising that part of his life, but your take on it seems plausible. This is where a little book learnin’ comes into its own - I don’t know shit about classical philosophy
I’d be interested to hear where you part company with Quinn in this area. Is it the Great Forgetting and the idea that 19th century thinkers weren’t keen to revisit the foundations of their various disciplines as soon as it became clear that they weren’t Humanity? Or do you object to the description of higher education in with school as being primarily to ‘regulate the flow of young people into the job market’? Another point I meant to make was the one about inter-disciplinary thinking. This is where ‘being your own teacher’ really seems to pay off, with DQ as a case in point. It seems to me like he would have struggled to arrive at half his important insights if he’d undergone formal education in each of the subject areas he chose to dabble in.
Ah, the Primacy of Personal Experience… I do agree with you though, that we need a ‘base of shared knowledge’ (and this site has been valuable to me for that reason, among others) otherwise any Metafilter Moron can barge in and piss all over your careful work without a moment’s hesitation, thought, or consideration for the struggle that went into it. Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was possible for one such resource to deal so comprehensively with so many contentious issues, let alone one person…
I don’t think I’ve been arguing that rigorous intellectual discourse is a bad or an unnecessary thing. I think the degree to which it is necessary varies historically in direct relation to how many others are threatening your way of life.
Comment by Ian M — 3 October 2007 @ 8:55 AM
(Sorry, I was going to say ‘Truth plays second fiddle to Useful Facts’ - but that doesn’t make much sense, so I meant to delete it. Truth probably plays the whole string section now I think about it…)
Comment by Ian M — 3 October 2007 @ 9:04 AM
I really think that’s more just a special case of the fact that a society will only reward people who do things that society values. No, you won’t get paid for pursuing knowledge nobody cares about; by the same token, you won’t get paid to do something nobody cares about, either.
But knowledge isn’t something you pursue because someone pays you; it’s something you pursue because you want to know. Sure, you’ve got the people who are just trying to make a living, but they don’t really matter. You always have those people. They’re irrelevant. I wanted to know about how our society worked. No, nobody’s ever paid me to pursue that question, but nobody’s ever been able to do anything to stop me, either.
Historically, no. Most of the ideas and innovations most prized by academics come from years of careful research and work. 99% of the people howling in the desert don’t do so because society can’t handle their incredible wisdom; most are howling in the desert because they’re daft. Sure, there have been genuine visionaries, but if somebody tells you they talk to G-d, is it really your first assumption that you stand before a genuine prophet, or that he’s just crazy?
Oh, I absolutely agree with him about the Great Forgetting. But that’s a cultural blind spot, not a question of the educational system gone awry, much less any kind of malevolent academic conspiracy. But education (including higher education) is not some plan to keep children out of the work force, as Quinn describes. As social complexity has increased exponentially, so has the amount of time your average student spends in school. We’ve reached the point that our society is so complex that it takes 20 years of schooling to become conversant in it.
Actually, I see Quinn’s lack of background as the cause for those points where he really gets hamstrung. I have a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, so I did undergo a formal education in the subject areas I’ve been writing about. It’s helped me a great deal. And the points where I disagree with Quinn all revolve around points Quinn would have known if he’d pursued some kind of formal education in those areas.
I think we’re all enriched by the regular exercise of this side of mental life. No, it shouldn’t be the only side of mental life we ever explore, but I do think it’s one we could all use regularly.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 October 2007 @ 6:45 PM
This inspired me to write a bit on a similar subject.
“What Went Wrong”
http://www.mythic-cartography.org/2007/10/04/what-went-wrong/
Comment by Willem — 4 October 2007 @ 7:51 PM
Ouch! I know I called them chimps, but still … isn’t it funny how many there are of them? - how much vital talent must be locked away in there and is that by oversight or by design? Kudos to you for pursuing a question no one cares about enough to pay you for it, but don’t you see what a minority that puts you in? Nobody can stop the nefarious practice, but things haven’t exactly been made easy for the kind of person who prefers to join dots and come to conclusions on their own terms. I don’t believe in big conscious conspiracies, but society-wide this looks like a heavy selection pressure against ‘your sort’ of truthseeker IMO. The material on this site is NOT the stuff of polite dinner party conversations! (You may not be one to worry about your own popularity, but you are not Most People…)
Maybe you’d respond to these flippant remarks by saying That doesn’t matter, all you need are a few dedicated trailblazers. Truth is truth, knowledge is knowledge, fact is fact. People will have to come to terms with it eventually cuz they can’t ignore it forever: “All the same, it moves” like Galileo said. And anyway, it’s a good thing for people to face that pressure: sorts the men from the boys. You’d probably be right. All I’m pointing out is the condition of the playing field. It’s not level.
Hmmm, ‘howling in the desert’ does carry a few unfortunate connotations doesn’t it… I was thinking more of fresh perspectives coming from outside the laboratory, like Darwin on the Beagle or Newton in the orchard. Granted, these probably wouldn’t have come about without the years of research as a solid base.
This has a ring of truth to it, but it depends on what you mean by ‘conversant,’ and whether this is a function schools are actually performing from, say, age 12 onward (by which time all the basic skills an entry-level worker needs will have been learned). If you look at it a certain way, aren’t newspapers, TV and maybe a couple of books all you really need to become adequately conversant in modern society? Schools are necessary for society’s other requirements like breaking will and imagination, breeding conformity and submission to authority, preparing excitable kids for working lives of endless monotony, etc etc etc ad nauseam.
I was surprised in a way that a degree in anthropology didn’t provide you with the perfect environment for Phaedrus-style fallouts with professors reciting Mother Culture’s platitudes. Are you sure you were asking the right questions? All this is prompting me to wonder whether there isn’t some broad adversarial streak in me that I’ve been neglecting all these years. Which is a bummer, since I’ve gotten so pleased with finding problems outside myself for a change. I suppose you have to focus on changing the stuff inside at the same time as engaging with their external manifestations.
It’s a pity I don’t seem to have shown you much of the merits in taking learning outside of educational institutions. There is a sense in which your summary of my horror ‘at how much effort academia demands’ is accurate - I am not a workaholic by any stretch of the imagination, and I stopped apologising for it a while ago. But objectively it is a lot of time and effort that could easily be better spent if (and this is the important caveat) if you’re not into the subject. I’m kindof envious of people like yourself who show such facility for getting through such prodigious quantities of material. It seems effortless because they must live and breathe the subject in question, and nothing can get in the way of that (not even a smart-arse in the back row calling them a suck-up). They are the lucky ones.
That’s never been my way, and I don’t think I’m the only one. People tell me that I just have to try: “do the work and the rest will follow” but that’s just not how my brain works. Sometimes it’s ripe and ready to be ‘enriched’ by the ‘exercise of [that] side of mental life,’ but more often, especially when it’s uninvited, I have to treat the workout as a game that I’m not taking too seriously. When I do take it seriously one question explodes into ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, all of which turn into individual angles of attack on the original, from which everyone else in the class has long since moved on. Lockstep learning at a pre-determined pace has got nothing to offer me: things are either banal truisms or they’re vast knots of confusion - and I’m expected to spend equal amounts of time on them?
Which is why I have to be an autodidact
This is sort of what I meant by my last parenthetical throwaway: ‘…facing only those challenges which we choose,’ and an example of why it’s important for the ‘different approaches’ to talk to one another.
Comment by Ian M — 5 October 2007 @ 4:51 PM
So sorry I missed this thread when it was current, but I’ll add a bit anyway. To Aaron’s original statement, “academic methods are destructive since academia’s first priority is to reinforce the hierarchy and it’s values . . and this means avoiding communal style collaboration,” I’d say to check out academic papers and see how many have multiple authors as opposed to only one. Sure, there’s as much backstabbing in academia as anywhere else. But collaboration in academia is rampant; it’s how you survive (I teach at two universities and have worked at several others). But I’ll agree that too often the response to critique, especially in a non-peer reviewed medium like the Web, is to dig in. In academic writing though, you actually have to respond intelligently to critique or you don’t get published again, and the result is usually for the better.
I know that a critical review of one’s ideas can be frightening. When I first started out as a scientist and presented my work to colleagues, I was terrified. But the bogey-men were much more inside me than out there. I finally saw that my colleagues honestly wanted to see my work get stronger: “Here’s how to eliminate the weaknesses,” is what they were saying. Knowledge, as Popper points out, doesn’t progress by building truth upon truth–there’s no such thing as certain truth. Knowledge progresses by abandoning what we know to be unsupportable. That may look like combat, but it’s more like sculpture: Cut away what doesn’t belong and weld on new parts that do.
When Jason has critiqued my work, sure, I’ve gotten a little bent out of shape. But mostly my reaction is, “Dang, I could have chosen more clear language there,” or “That argument does need work, doesn’t it.” (What drives me nuts is when people willfully misrepresent an argument, although that’s a mask for a rebuttal’s poverty. Jason is usually careful not to twist words, except when he’s really mad.) If I were to rewrite “Apocalypse, Not” or the Urban/Rural articles (and I might!), they would be far stronger for Jason’s critiques, which have been more intelligent than most of the (too many) comments that work has gotten. And it’s a good lesson for me to have Jason take a hard swing at a piece of mine and then see that he still holds me in high regard.
The difficulty here is that much of what we are doing is speculating on, and trying to prepare for, the future: will collapse occur, when, how hard, where first, in what way? We’re trying to map a territory no one has been to. Until that future arrives there is no way to say who is right, so we’ll go round and round about it. And with a subject like collapse, we bring so much emotional baggage along with us that there is no such thing as a calm, sober evaluation of the facts. We project a lot of who we are onto our futures.
The value of all this debate is that now we have the chance to be aware of what the possibilities are in a much deeper way than if we just listened to our own inner voices. Sure, sometimes after a tough critique I don’t want to go near my keyboard for a while, but that’s my own shit. The good critiques–and let’s learn to let the nasty ones roll off–force us to strengthen our thinking, and they carry a lot more information than “great post, dude!”
Comment by Toby Hemenway — 15 November 2007 @ 2:04 AM
Thanks for stopping in, Toby. You said it much better than I; I could hardly agree more!
Comment by Jason Godesky — 18 November 2007 @ 11:24 AM