for sure

I wish I could write about other people, about the world, as readily as I can write about myself. Maybe if I tried...? Part of what keeps me from doing it, I think, is the fear that I don't know enough to speak intelligently about world events, about works of art, about society. Of course, you might say that not knowing enough doesn't stop other people from speaking about these things. I sometimes think part of being an academic is acting as if you know everything, even when you know you don't. I do wonder, though--not just in academia, but among pundits, in conversations and debates people have with one another--how often people just don't actually know what they're talking about. Yet they act like they do, so you're inclined to believe them, because you don't know enough yourself to challenge what they have to say.

Anyway, what all of this means for me is that I rarely participate in 'debates' among my friends, because I often feel that none of us really know enough to have a debate of any relevance. In these situations, if I do speak up, it's usually when I'm able to cut through the arguments and get to the core point of disagreement. I have this idea (which may or may not be right) that most debates, most controversies, stem from fundamentally different assumptions. You can argue as much as you want, but the arguments don't actually matter, because the real disagreement is rooted in a different way of seeing things that no amount of argument is going to change. I think of this with the argument about abortion, for instance, where I think the fundamental disagreement is about when the zygote/embryo/fetus becomes a human being. Because, obviously, once the thing is human, it shouldn't be aborted, since that's killing a defenseless human being, which is murder, which most people would maintain is wrong. The thing is, some people think life starts at conception, while some think life starts after the first trimester, while some think...you get the idea. Religious arguments against abortion (at any stage) are not irrational--they're just rooted in a view that human life begins at a certain point. Under this view, the argument makes total sense. So you can argue pro-life, pro-choice, all you want, but I think the key is the assumption about when human life begins, which is something we are likely to disagree about 'forever.'

I think a number of ethical/political/religious conflicts boil down to differing fundamental worldview assumptions, but this is often lost under a mass of propaganda and bluster. I think, therefore, that if you want to change someone's mind about a conflict, you have to somehow change their assumptions, which is more often a matter of rhetoric than rational argument. People tend to 'feel' a side in a conflict, rather than rationally embrace a side. So persuasion is key, especially when there are few things we can universally know 'for sure.'