I just wrote the following as a comment to a post by Matt Stigliano:
There is a world of difference between having a debate and exchanging viewpoints. Some debates are really in the contest category and the goal ceases to be about discovery and becomes a contest in making the other person wrong.
When a person is looking at other viewpoints in order to broaden his own – making the other person wrong does not enter into it in any way.
I suppose this train wreck was on my mind when I wrote the above. Years ago when I factually knew everything – anybody who expressed a viewpoint that was different than mine was behind the times or just simply wrong. Over the years, the more I learned the less self-righteous I became, the more I could see things from the other person’s viewpoint. I found that there were a great many correct methods and that each and every one of those methods being adjudicated as correct was never anything but a matter of viewpoint. Things that are “good” are simply those things that an individual considers good. Same with “bad”. Like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder. There is nothing that is “absolutely good” or “absolutely bad”. Those things, ideas, people, entities that are conceived to assist survival are ” good”. Those that inhibit survival are “bad”.
Just as life is improved on a gradient,thought – if it is going to be logical – would allow for gradient scale logic. Not just YES and NO, but a gradient scale of YES and NO. Some things are more pro-survival than others and vice versa.
284 comments and counting. The only idea and statement made by Eric Bramlett was that forced registration, to be allowed to see the IDX results, would produce more deals than not having forced registration. And that he had empirical data to verify that statement as being true. Not quite at the level of “gravity can be counted upon when you are outside” but still a pretty simple concept. What happened next is something to behold. You would have thought that someone set a Mormon down across from a Catholic and demanded of both of them, “Convert him”!! Perhaps the most remarkable idea put forth (and defended, I might add) was that forced registration was just as evil as murder.
If the purpose of commenting or offering a different opinion is to change the other person’s viewpoint with your “better” viewpoint – just one question: Does that technique ever work?
And if the reason for communicating isn’t to share with others, then what is left? To write or talk so you can read it or hear it yourself?
