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Feb. 27th, 2007 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaRandomly: I notice that I care more about disproving the minor errors and inadequacies of people with whose philosophy and overall approach to life and things I basically agree, rather than with those I emphatically disagree.
It's not that I don't like to be disagreed with-- that's quite invigorating, actually; it's more that I feel there needs to be an agreed-upon approach to an issue for it to be open to productive discussion, and more than half the time the approach is already half the battle. So much of the time, the reason people disagree is because at heart, they don't have the same basic ideas about 'what's important in life' (or about the subject). People will even build perfectly logical chains of thought that I'd respect, except their basis is so cracked out there's no saving them.
...Perhaps that kind of says a lot about the joys and pitfalls of my experience in fandom :>
Mostly, though, I am too lazy and also too easily frustrated to try and converse with people who're utterly convinced of things I consider to be utterly idiotic. Which is why I wasn't cut out for a debate about politics with my friend yesterday (which she seemed to want). My friend has a pet issue she was trying to present to me as the Ultimate Solution to Our Ills, and she kept telling me certain things that I could nod at or say small things about (which she discounted because they were 'merely fact'), but in the end, in the face of someone's utter conviction, I have nothing much to say (to their face) unless I immediately and instinctively agree. Alas.
Perhaps she sensed my disagreement & was frustrated by my refusing to voice it; but it wasn't that I refused or was consciously avoiding conflict so much as unable to enter the fray without having a common language. I have no desire to talk past someone, and I'm willing to have a discussion only if I sense the other person's open to if not persuasion then a certain open-endedness of thought. (This is also why I pretty much don't talk about politics with -anyone- and avoid politics in general; it seems there's something about the subject that makes everyone a lot less open-ended and a lot more dogmatic. But maybe that's just me.)
It's just a bit ironic that I have so little of use to say about something so obviously 'meaningful' and applicable as current politics, and yet have so much to say about the ideological details of a fantasy book I'm reading (to the point where I'd easily-- and passionately-- discuss its internal politics with someone who cared). Perhaps it's at least partly that I do agree with 70% of Alison Croggon's cosmology, stylistic concerns & her ethics and think her execution is sometimes off or her follow-through is lazy, whereas I just can't identify to that extent with anything commonly said about current affairs by... pretty much anyone (though I find people have 'good ideas', it's nothing to fire me up). So. I dunno, I don't have a point ;P
I think part of my theoretical willingness to talk fantasy-world politics might be that we can (usually) agree on starting points; in the real world, it seems everyone's much more free to make up their facts (or more specifically, the salient facts) as they go along, and it's a major achievement if you feel you're reading from 'the same canon' >.> I guess that's why so many people have 'causes' and organizations they particularly support; they like to feel they're working with people who have a similar slant on 'salient facts'. Somehow, though, I can never find groups that have around 10 (at least) focus issues from all sorts of different ideological areas (not something like 'human rights', which is just a grouping of related issues), and to me, a holistic understanding is the only one I'm that interested in. Really, I'd like to ideally address as much of the real-world 'canon' as possible, but most people think that's hopeless so I just shut up. Meh. *babbles*
It's not that I don't like to be disagreed with-- that's quite invigorating, actually; it's more that I feel there needs to be an agreed-upon approach to an issue for it to be open to productive discussion, and more than half the time the approach is already half the battle. So much of the time, the reason people disagree is because at heart, they don't have the same basic ideas about 'what's important in life' (or about the subject). People will even build perfectly logical chains of thought that I'd respect, except their basis is so cracked out there's no saving them.
...Perhaps that kind of says a lot about the joys and pitfalls of my experience in fandom :>
Mostly, though, I am too lazy and also too easily frustrated to try and converse with people who're utterly convinced of things I consider to be utterly idiotic. Which is why I wasn't cut out for a debate about politics with my friend yesterday (which she seemed to want). My friend has a pet issue she was trying to present to me as the Ultimate Solution to Our Ills, and she kept telling me certain things that I could nod at or say small things about (which she discounted because they were 'merely fact'), but in the end, in the face of someone's utter conviction, I have nothing much to say (to their face) unless I immediately and instinctively agree. Alas.
Perhaps she sensed my disagreement & was frustrated by my refusing to voice it; but it wasn't that I refused or was consciously avoiding conflict so much as unable to enter the fray without having a common language. I have no desire to talk past someone, and I'm willing to have a discussion only if I sense the other person's open to if not persuasion then a certain open-endedness of thought. (This is also why I pretty much don't talk about politics with -anyone- and avoid politics in general; it seems there's something about the subject that makes everyone a lot less open-ended and a lot more dogmatic. But maybe that's just me.)
It's just a bit ironic that I have so little of use to say about something so obviously 'meaningful' and applicable as current politics, and yet have so much to say about the ideological details of a fantasy book I'm reading (to the point where I'd easily-- and passionately-- discuss its internal politics with someone who cared). Perhaps it's at least partly that I do agree with 70% of Alison Croggon's cosmology, stylistic concerns & her ethics and think her execution is sometimes off or her follow-through is lazy, whereas I just can't identify to that extent with anything commonly said about current affairs by... pretty much anyone (though I find people have 'good ideas', it's nothing to fire me up). So. I dunno, I don't have a point ;P
I think part of my theoretical willingness to talk fantasy-world politics might be that we can (usually) agree on starting points; in the real world, it seems everyone's much more free to make up their facts (or more specifically, the salient facts) as they go along, and it's a major achievement if you feel you're reading from 'the same canon' >.> I guess that's why so many people have 'causes' and organizations they particularly support; they like to feel they're working with people who have a similar slant on 'salient facts'. Somehow, though, I can never find groups that have around 10 (at least) focus issues from all sorts of different ideological areas (not something like 'human rights', which is just a grouping of related issues), and to me, a holistic understanding is the only one I'm that interested in. Really, I'd like to ideally address as much of the real-world 'canon' as possible, but most people think that's hopeless so I just shut up. Meh. *babbles*
