What a coool thread -- all 35 entries! I, for one, did not know there was a classification for my favorite kind of debating, where people don't defeat their partners but instead support the ongoing display of the fireworks. Gosh, I wish more people did this -- but without gradually spacing out into platitudes. I usually end up supplying material for both sides of the debate, kind of like an actor playing two different roles in the same scene.
I agree with Turq about what is said by the cherishing of one's favorite myths. I had a political epiphany once when I heard the story of an activist in Chicago. This activist had a certain point of view because of the world he experienced daily. His world was filled with perpetrators and victims. There were almost no other actors in his stories, so he viewed socialism as the ideal system. My world, on the other hand, was filled with individuals with potential to be strong and free and happy, so I viewed free minds and free markets as ideal. I realized that I would never ever be able to find common ground with this activist, even though we were both very dedicated to helping people toward better lives. Not one of my best arguments would ever touch him, because I may as well have been talking about the politics of a different galaxy. The people of my world were not the people of his. My point is that we people our internal worlds with personalities we come to know, and we people our myths with the characters we are familiar with. Yet the people in my myth are different characters than the people in your myth, so the effect of the myth is different to each of us, and we may never really get how another person understands the myth even when we both hear the same words. Or maybe we could if we both enjoy Buddhist debate, and to keep the exchange going we each help the other to make better and better points about the two very different stories told by the exact same words.
