Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Blogger friend Daniel Summers, that is…
I’ve got a good bit on my mind this morning. I held back from posting anything negative about our nation yesterday. “Happy Birthday America – you suck!” just seemed inappropriate.
However, our nation does have many, many flaws. I’m not ready to discard her, by any means; but I see, at nearly every turn, her people and her government making the wrong decisions, and continuing her slide towards mediocrity and insecurity, under the guise of improving both. In nearly every issue, the underlying cause appears to me to be the same – an inability to dispassionately, rationally evaluate a situation, policy, etc. on its merits alone. This is displayed on both sides of the political divide, where talking points and comebacks are slung back and forth, and seems to be what passes for civil discourse. It isn’t!
:
America is not beyond hope. We must change course, though, or we will find ourselves swimming in self-induced mediocrity, while we are crowing over how advanced we are. To get God’s blessing, we must turn to Him; to elevate civil discourse, we must teach reasoning.
Reasoning, to me, represents a great deal more than just the dictionary definition. In my world it is an object-oriented exercise, starting with a vision, from which is derived one or several objectives. To service the objectives, we gather facts, and then we infer from those facts what is really going on. Once we figure out to our own satisfaction what’s really going on, we reconcile that with the objectives and from what we figure out what to do.
This provides a lot of opportunity for rational, reasoning people to disagree, with neither side of the disagreement doing anything irresponsible, intellectually lazy or insincere. They could have different visions, or they could share a common vision but labor toward different objectives. They could be looking at different facts; they could be looking at the same facts and from those, they might arrive at different conclusions about what’s going on. In my experience, it is very, very rare for any two sides to share common visions, objectives, facts and conclusions and then disagree about what is to be done; by the time your compass or ruler passes through that many plot points, the rest of it is usually pretty clear and there’s not much arguing left to be done.
But argue we do. From that, I conclude — see that? I just did it! — there is much disagreement about what comes before. The discussions that ensue don’t go there very often, though, and I believe this is because of what frustrates me…and it seems to be frustrating Mr. Summers as well. Our “national ability,” if you will, to slog it out earnestly about our differences in visions, objectives, facts gathered and conclusions inferred, is in a state of decline and has been for quite some time.
And I think if we could pie-chart-plot it, with honesty somehow restored and then measured, we’d find much of the culpability in the first stage, the vision. People support different objectives because they nurture different visions. If we could somehow fasten that Up! dog collar to ’em so that a sincere statement of the vision could be vocalized, with or without their consent, we’d be hearing an awful lot of the same thing: I want my team to win and I want that other team to lose. I agree with Daniel there’s a lot of that on both sides of the divide. And I also agree that if it passes for “civil discourse,” it shouldn’t.
I recall years ago one of my managers got into a scuffle with another manager, and demonstrated his written-communication prowess in the e-mail. His message was structured in the following way: “I want (something anybody else should want, who gives a hang about the business). In order to do that, I need to (blank), and in order to get that done, I need you to (thing the other manager was refusing to do).” Copied to a zillion and one people. This is not effective for diplomacy, cooling down a tense situation, or anything of the like…but again…vision, objective. The writer of the e-mail made a conscious decision about whether that was part of his priority scheme or not, and decided to go for the jugular. Agree or disagree about that part, you have to admit that the way things are executed following that decision, make sense in their own way.
Maybe that’s not good for a corporate environment. Or, maybe it’s good only for “hill I wanna die on” situations, that have been deliberately and diligently adjudicated to be past the point of easing tensions. But in politics, I think, it would be much more appropriate, and much more often…perhaps all of the time, for the foreseeable future, until people stop equating politics with sports and instantaneously leaping to support their “home teams.” These are thoughts that should be in abundance, and instead, are in short supply — disgracefully short supply, at times, I would say. “I want (what’s good for all of us); to do that, I need (blank); therefore, we must (blank) (unless you have a better idea you can offer).”
I hope, by July 4th next year, we can get back to some of that.
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- Steynian 479st | Free Canuckistan! | 07/21/2013 @ 16:01