First of all, on reflection I think my behaviour has been a little hostile lately, and I'd like to broadcast a general apology about that. Not only Bruno, but I make a special mention for him because the guy gives me and other people a lot of time, and I was actually rather unpleasant in at least one post. Sorry man! But also no exceptions to this 'sorry'...the only reason I don't mention each and every regrettable conduct, is because then maybe I'd be forgetting someone. One other problem is the swearing...which is a behaviour reasonable avoid rules about....because everyone is reasonable. I think I've been flying close to unreasonable...so again apologies for that also. Can we put it all down to a few hard days at the office :O) So the interesting part of any self-reflection is normally - for me - about noticing how easy it is to pigeon hole other people - or their views - based on small evidence and/or perhaps mistakes that they are making in how they judge you - me...oneself. What I'd like to say about this, is I don't think it's a very interesting matter, save those aspects that are fairly general to all or most people. At least as 'risks' or 'influences' or 'tendencies. For example, thinking about the Internet, an observation would be that many debates that are important, are heavily represented across internet social/debate mediums, and that by-and-large there are typical battle-lines which are fairly reliably drawn in terms, not of a specific position but 'packages' of positions...often which - also reliably - span not just one of the important contemporary questions, but a whole a range. Reliably enough, spanning really large patchworks of political/philosophical/social positionings. So...no surprises....that a landscape such as this gives rise to the 'rule of thumb'. If someone introduces him/her self into a debate with a certain positioning, the rule of thumb can be powerful psychological imprint for a great many people in that debate. Particularly when a debate has become furious, distrusting, and intractable. What I'd suggest - based on personal observations of myself...and other people too....is that these 'rule of thumbs' that we experience online, in certain types of debate (like climate) are actually subject to a kind of group-think self-fulfilling accelerant. It's not just the 'other' side that will pigeon hole our position, but the 'home' side. People on one side will assume you are one of the 'good' guys in that debate. They will leap to your defence, just as those from the 'other' side, having identified you as one of the 'bad' guys of the debate will have thrown possibly some slightly loaded response at you. A hostile projection from one direction, and a friendly/homely projection from another, can sort of drive you into a 'camp' that perhaps represents package of positions that you are very much not on board with. But the ferocity of the argument can be such that, you never really get a chance to position yourself in a way that might have been much easier for people on all sides to bridge. It's not that we don't try. We do try, but chances are, the other side will have a lot of individuals who are currently midway through a heated debate, intellectually enraged about one thing or another, and chances are the way these attempts at individual positioning will be received, will be as weaknesses, or opportunities, to make some allegation....which in fact is also typically a package of positions, not just an allegation but also including various slants on professed innocence, or purety of motivation....pregnancies of proving associations,...that if this allegation that your attempt at an individual positioning just opened the door to, is true...and the argument is suddenly that it must be based on what you just tried to say..,.,..that all those other connected positions are true also. So the whole place just explodes in a new round of enraged arguing...with the net result of hardening the engrained battle-lines, rather than softening. I'm offering the above very much as an ad-lib written 'illustration' of what is very much one instance - I think - of a more general difficulty...that may be related to the complexities of the communication revolution we are still in the early stages of. I'll be viewing the presentation telmo recommends in his latest post to the cannabis thread, because I think the issues he touches on in the bullet points are significant. The perception I'm offering here is that, we seem to be finding it harder and harder to talk to about anything that is more and more important that we should be. Be 'we' I mean humanity on the airwaves in general.
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