I'm not sure what it means to say that a rapist and rapee are on the same side, for example. I suppose it might be true on a species-gene level, sortof. (Or, as another example, Palestinians being murdered and ethnically cleansed by river-to-the-sea-Zionists. Or, as another example, people wanting to be left alone and those who don't want to leave them alone.)
> radical uncertainty ... I never know 100% what is true.
I'm not sure what that means. Like, say my kid is raped or enslaved (in front of me :p), should I doubt that it happened? Should I not take his side - for the sake of not taking sides - because from some other perspective we're all on the same side?
> taking a side creates war
Well, someone initiates it, and the other person chooses how to respond - ranging from pacifism to some degree of retaliation. I wouldn't say that taking a pacifist tactic means there is no war going on (as the expression "it takes two to tango" suggests). If nowhere else, there is a war going on in your head, you aren't okay with those injustices done unto you.
I don't think the problem is people have incorrect/false opinions. I think they know that they're false/dishonest, and that explains their reactions when you try to correct them - their aggression and evasion. For example, a driver going in the wrong direction would appreciate course corrections. On the other hand someone who secretly (or openly) actually wants to be going in that direction would not. Someone who really wants to go south, for example, say for some very nefarious purpose, would get very aggressive when others try to pressure him to reverse course, he'd come up with all sorts of incoherent reasons not to - this is precisely the behavior we witness among "statists" and other immoral people.
Thanks Dennis. I can't find in my essay where I said "we're all on the same side" (sorry if I'm missing it). Though I perhaps would say that, in the sense that, we are all human beings in a vast, otherwise humanless universe. So we are all on the same side in that respect. And yet people get hurt by the actions of other people.
What I did say in my essay was "taking sides creates war". And after reading your comment I see that what would have been more true for me is to have said "when my mind takes sides, it creates war". I'm not necessarily sure that it does for other people. Perhaps there is a case where taking sides is right, I can't know that for sure and I certainly don't want to argue that someone shouldn't take a side if they feel strongly that taking a side is right.
If you ask me whose side am I on in any interaction involving two people, I answer, there is no one being assaulted around me, that I can see or I can hear, right now. I don't know who is the assaulter, and who is the victim, so I can't say whose side I am on. If what is happening is in front of me - like in your second example of seeing something happening to the child in front of you - I still don't need to take a side. What I need to do is respond. My experience is that when I see someone in need that I can help, I choose to act to help them. There's no intellectual requirement to act. If my child is about to stick their hand in the lion's cage, I don't need to know whether I take the side of the child or the lion. I just act to pull the child away.
When I talk about radical uncertainty, I am speaking about what we hold in our mind. What we hold in our mind affects how we act in real life. How we act in reality - whether we intervene towards injustice, whether we defend against a threat, whether we save a life - is one thing, and action can always be taken when we are crystal clear about what is going on around us. My experience when it comes to having an opinion about something abstract - something that is not in the room with me - is that it's not necessarily helpful for me, and that's what I'm trying to convey in my essay. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
> I can't find in my essay where I said "we're all on the same side"
They were the last words of your post :). [EDIT: Errr, they were the last words in the email substack sent me, and in my rss feed post.]
> when my mind takes sides, it creates war
That's not true, as I explained in my comment. You aren't initiating aggression, or the threat of it. You're responding to it. Ie. the war has already been declared, and then you have a choice about how to respond to it.
> Perhaps there is a case where taking sides is right
I still don't know what you mean by "taking sides". "Taking the side" of the good guy doesn't mean ignoring the bad guy, nor does it mean not having empathy for him, or unjustly punishing him. I thought it simply meant, at a bear minimum, acknowledging who is right and who is wrong.
I think it would help if you provided a concrete example. I suspect that what you're really trying to do is rationalize not confronting/defooing your family :-). Can you share with us why you left that family thanksgiving table all those years ago? I bet you were actually right, and it was important, but you didn't want to accept the consequences of "taking a side" - because dumping family is hard.
My argument was that we should stop funding highways and that cars should basically be banned. Do you think I was right or wrong in my argument? Many people would say I was wrong. Does that make them right? Or was I right? Who gets to decide?
To me, deciding who is right or wrong is taking sides. And I don't need to decide between right and wrong to take action or help people. My right could be your wrong. I am sure there are many things you and I agree on, where we'd both think we are right, and many things we disagree on (eg, whether taking sides creates war) and you'd say you were right and I was wrong or vice versa.
Not taking sides does not mean passivity and inaction. For me it means a clear mind that responds to immediate reality, not holding onto an opinion.
It might be we are arguing about language and our interpretations of it. Or maybe we're not arguing at all! I don't want to try and convince you of my outlook or dissuade you of yours. Just trying to explain how I see it a little more.
Ambiguous - would you use force to stop others paying to build highways on private property? Nobody ought to be allowed to force anyone to pay (or not pay) for (peaceful) things.
> cars should be banned
You were wrong. Driving cars is a peaceful activity between consenting adults.
However, these issues become a bit more flexible on the local city-scale, because moving to another city with different rules is a lot more realistic. Ideally though the prohibition on cars should have been implemented early on, before people started moving in, because they came expecting to be able to drive around, an implied contract. Did you know that Big Brother doesn't allow us to create cities (maybe not even neighbourhoods) without roads/cars? If people were actually free, they'd organically self-sort.
> I don't need to decide between right and wrong to take action or help people
Yes you do - for example, imagine there are two people hanging off an unstable cliff edge, a man and a girl, and you only have time to save one. The girl's dress is torn and her face is bruised, the man has no pants. And a video of what appears to be the prior events is playing on a phone on the ground on his pants.
Ie. maybe sometimes in the initial moments we don't need this information, but certainly later on we do (given allegations of a crime).
> we disagree on (eg, whether taking sides creates war)
Nah. I was just focusing on who was creating/initiating the war, it wasn't clear from your wording. I agree that a war is created, I would say it's the same thing - declaring someone is evil/wrong is declaring war. If someone initiates aggression (or the threat of it) against you, I would say they are declaring (creating?) war, wouldn't you? Are we just quibbling about whether declaring war is the same as creating/manifesting it? But that would be like quibbling about whether an armed robbery was _actually_ violent - I mean, maybe he was bluffing and it was just a toy gun.
> Not taking sides does not mean passivity and inaction. For me it means a clear mind that responds to immediate reality
Oh! Shoulda started off with that definition! :) How would you define "taking a side"? Unreasonably holding onto opinions?
> I don't want to try and convince you of my outlook or dissuade you of yours
You would if my outlook involved initiating aggression, if it involved hurting innocent people - as proponents of "national" "funding" of highways propose.
The kind of side taking I'm talking about in this essay, the kind I define as creating war in me (even if nowhere else) is holding certainty that one side or one way is right in the kind of rigid way that dismisses, puts down, belittles or closes my mind to the other side or any other way of looking at things. And I guess you could refine to say it's when I theoretically take sides. Ie, I don't see saving someone from an animal or pulling them out of the fire is taking sides as I'm defining taking sides. I suppose I could see it is still taking a side (against the animal) but it seems to me my reflexive conditioning takes over to make the decision of whose side to take rather than my ego needing to get involved. I would say having an opinion and being angry/dismissive/disgusted etc etc with someone with a different opinion is the kind of side-taking I'm discussing.
I still have tons of opinions and inclinations. But they are always changing. And as soon as I find myself wanting to convince someone else that I'm right and they are wrong, as soon as I start to feel that anger or frustration etc, I know I'm in side taking land for me. It even happened with this exchange with you. I feel "I need to convince Denis I'm right that taking sides is wrong" and it closes my mind to you and your comments. So the first time I read your final comment I completely skipped over where you pointed out places of agreement or where we weren't disagreeing. I literally didn't see your words because my mind said "oh no he disagrees with me and is saying I'm wrong" and my frustration blocked my vision. When I noticed that I was taking a side in our exchange, I was able to let in the possibility that I might be wrong, or you might be right. Then I could reread your comment from a place of curiosity and interest and see everything you wrote, not just the places where I felt disagreement.
> we’re all on the same side
I'm not sure what it means to say that a rapist and rapee are on the same side, for example. I suppose it might be true on a species-gene level, sortof. (Or, as another example, Palestinians being murdered and ethnically cleansed by river-to-the-sea-Zionists. Or, as another example, people wanting to be left alone and those who don't want to leave them alone.)
> radical uncertainty ... I never know 100% what is true.
I'm not sure what that means. Like, say my kid is raped or enslaved (in front of me :p), should I doubt that it happened? Should I not take his side - for the sake of not taking sides - because from some other perspective we're all on the same side?
> taking a side creates war
Well, someone initiates it, and the other person chooses how to respond - ranging from pacifism to some degree of retaliation. I wouldn't say that taking a pacifist tactic means there is no war going on (as the expression "it takes two to tango" suggests). If nowhere else, there is a war going on in your head, you aren't okay with those injustices done unto you.
I don't think the problem is people have incorrect/false opinions. I think they know that they're false/dishonest, and that explains their reactions when you try to correct them - their aggression and evasion. For example, a driver going in the wrong direction would appreciate course corrections. On the other hand someone who secretly (or openly) actually wants to be going in that direction would not. Someone who really wants to go south, for example, say for some very nefarious purpose, would get very aggressive when others try to pressure him to reverse course, he'd come up with all sorts of incoherent reasons not to - this is precisely the behavior we witness among "statists" and other immoral people.
Thanks Dennis. I can't find in my essay where I said "we're all on the same side" (sorry if I'm missing it). Though I perhaps would say that, in the sense that, we are all human beings in a vast, otherwise humanless universe. So we are all on the same side in that respect. And yet people get hurt by the actions of other people.
What I did say in my essay was "taking sides creates war". And after reading your comment I see that what would have been more true for me is to have said "when my mind takes sides, it creates war". I'm not necessarily sure that it does for other people. Perhaps there is a case where taking sides is right, I can't know that for sure and I certainly don't want to argue that someone shouldn't take a side if they feel strongly that taking a side is right.
If you ask me whose side am I on in any interaction involving two people, I answer, there is no one being assaulted around me, that I can see or I can hear, right now. I don't know who is the assaulter, and who is the victim, so I can't say whose side I am on. If what is happening is in front of me - like in your second example of seeing something happening to the child in front of you - I still don't need to take a side. What I need to do is respond. My experience is that when I see someone in need that I can help, I choose to act to help them. There's no intellectual requirement to act. If my child is about to stick their hand in the lion's cage, I don't need to know whether I take the side of the child or the lion. I just act to pull the child away.
When I talk about radical uncertainty, I am speaking about what we hold in our mind. What we hold in our mind affects how we act in real life. How we act in reality - whether we intervene towards injustice, whether we defend against a threat, whether we save a life - is one thing, and action can always be taken when we are crystal clear about what is going on around us. My experience when it comes to having an opinion about something abstract - something that is not in the room with me - is that it's not necessarily helpful for me, and that's what I'm trying to convey in my essay. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
> I can't find in my essay where I said "we're all on the same side"
They were the last words of your post :). [EDIT: Errr, they were the last words in the email substack sent me, and in my rss feed post.]
> when my mind takes sides, it creates war
That's not true, as I explained in my comment. You aren't initiating aggression, or the threat of it. You're responding to it. Ie. the war has already been declared, and then you have a choice about how to respond to it.
> Perhaps there is a case where taking sides is right
I still don't know what you mean by "taking sides". "Taking the side" of the good guy doesn't mean ignoring the bad guy, nor does it mean not having empathy for him, or unjustly punishing him. I thought it simply meant, at a bear minimum, acknowledging who is right and who is wrong.
I think it would help if you provided a concrete example. I suspect that what you're really trying to do is rationalize not confronting/defooing your family :-). Can you share with us why you left that family thanksgiving table all those years ago? I bet you were actually right, and it was important, but you didn't want to accept the consequences of "taking a side" - because dumping family is hard.
Oh thanks, I guess I didn't read to the end! ☺
My argument was that we should stop funding highways and that cars should basically be banned. Do you think I was right or wrong in my argument? Many people would say I was wrong. Does that make them right? Or was I right? Who gets to decide?
To me, deciding who is right or wrong is taking sides. And I don't need to decide between right and wrong to take action or help people. My right could be your wrong. I am sure there are many things you and I agree on, where we'd both think we are right, and many things we disagree on (eg, whether taking sides creates war) and you'd say you were right and I was wrong or vice versa.
Not taking sides does not mean passivity and inaction. For me it means a clear mind that responds to immediate reality, not holding onto an opinion.
It might be we are arguing about language and our interpretations of it. Or maybe we're not arguing at all! I don't want to try and convince you of my outlook or dissuade you of yours. Just trying to explain how I see it a little more.
> we should stop funding highways
Ambiguous - would you use force to stop others paying to build highways on private property? Nobody ought to be allowed to force anyone to pay (or not pay) for (peaceful) things.
> cars should be banned
You were wrong. Driving cars is a peaceful activity between consenting adults.
However, these issues become a bit more flexible on the local city-scale, because moving to another city with different rules is a lot more realistic. Ideally though the prohibition on cars should have been implemented early on, before people started moving in, because they came expecting to be able to drive around, an implied contract. Did you know that Big Brother doesn't allow us to create cities (maybe not even neighbourhoods) without roads/cars? If people were actually free, they'd organically self-sort.
> I don't need to decide between right and wrong to take action or help people
Yes you do - for example, imagine there are two people hanging off an unstable cliff edge, a man and a girl, and you only have time to save one. The girl's dress is torn and her face is bruised, the man has no pants. And a video of what appears to be the prior events is playing on a phone on the ground on his pants.
Ie. maybe sometimes in the initial moments we don't need this information, but certainly later on we do (given allegations of a crime).
> we disagree on (eg, whether taking sides creates war)
Nah. I was just focusing on who was creating/initiating the war, it wasn't clear from your wording. I agree that a war is created, I would say it's the same thing - declaring someone is evil/wrong is declaring war. If someone initiates aggression (or the threat of it) against you, I would say they are declaring (creating?) war, wouldn't you? Are we just quibbling about whether declaring war is the same as creating/manifesting it? But that would be like quibbling about whether an armed robbery was _actually_ violent - I mean, maybe he was bluffing and it was just a toy gun.
> Not taking sides does not mean passivity and inaction. For me it means a clear mind that responds to immediate reality
Oh! Shoulda started off with that definition! :) How would you define "taking a side"? Unreasonably holding onto opinions?
> I don't want to try and convince you of my outlook or dissuade you of yours
You would if my outlook involved initiating aggression, if it involved hurting innocent people - as proponents of "national" "funding" of highways propose.
The kind of side taking I'm talking about in this essay, the kind I define as creating war in me (even if nowhere else) is holding certainty that one side or one way is right in the kind of rigid way that dismisses, puts down, belittles or closes my mind to the other side or any other way of looking at things. And I guess you could refine to say it's when I theoretically take sides. Ie, I don't see saving someone from an animal or pulling them out of the fire is taking sides as I'm defining taking sides. I suppose I could see it is still taking a side (against the animal) but it seems to me my reflexive conditioning takes over to make the decision of whose side to take rather than my ego needing to get involved. I would say having an opinion and being angry/dismissive/disgusted etc etc with someone with a different opinion is the kind of side-taking I'm discussing.
I still have tons of opinions and inclinations. But they are always changing. And as soon as I find myself wanting to convince someone else that I'm right and they are wrong, as soon as I start to feel that anger or frustration etc, I know I'm in side taking land for me. It even happened with this exchange with you. I feel "I need to convince Denis I'm right that taking sides is wrong" and it closes my mind to you and your comments. So the first time I read your final comment I completely skipped over where you pointed out places of agreement or where we weren't disagreeing. I literally didn't see your words because my mind said "oh no he disagrees with me and is saying I'm wrong" and my frustration blocked my vision. When I noticed that I was taking a side in our exchange, I was able to let in the possibility that I might be wrong, or you might be right. Then I could reread your comment from a place of curiosity and interest and see everything you wrote, not just the places where I felt disagreement.
Love these provocations, Sarah! Even up to the end our egos are still trying to trap us, heh?
@Dennis raises some good points.
I think you're both right ;-)