July 07, 2010
Talking Heads
I’m glad that Talk News has contributors who are both for and against an issue and I appreciate hearing the differing views…when I can actually hear what is being said. All too often the host will let, or even encourage the guests talk loudly over one another. Occasionally a facilitator will even join in the verbal free-for-all as though they themselves were part of the panel discussion. I see shades of Paul in Ephesus when the whole city was in an uproar and the crowd rushed into the theater shouting, ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!’ “The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there.” (Acts 19:32 NIV) As a viewer of Talk News I think there are more than a few of us who get weary of the confusion and wonder, ‘Why I’m here?’
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Gail;
-----In his book, “Intellectuals and Society”, Thomas Sowell wrote, “The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect but not enough to encompass intelligence, which involves combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges. Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect. Wisdom is the rarest quality of all - the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce coherent understanding.” (Pg 2) What we often witness in these round table discussions is the clash of two very different ways of understanding more than two different sides of a particular issue. Note that the more vociferous roweling usually occurs between proponents of Progressive and Conservative viewpoints. Progressivism fundamentally approaches society as an experiment steeped in pragmatism (regardless of the incompatibility of experimentation and pragmatism.) Pragmatism is merely the propensity to do whatever might produce a desired objective. Since “whatever” is a superlative, it will necessarily include falsehood and deceit. And the inclusion of these dislodges integrity from the basic characteristics of the mind, setting it adrift to find whatever statement might support a desired position, whether or not it be either relevant or true. Therefore, Progressivism deals in a world that calls notions knowledge, showing little respect for empirical testing of its theories, even evading such testing with directed purpose.
-----Conservatism, on the other hand, must also deal with experimentation, for that is much of what the human experience is about. However, it observes the experiments of previous generations to extract from them a bearing upon reality which will adjust notion into known truth. Conservatism fundamentally approaches society as the results of many past experiments venturing on through many upcoming experiments towards further truth only understood by “combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges.” In short, conservatism is interested in conserving the learned truths about what is real from the desired notions about what is imagined.
-----Conservatism sets its bearings upon the way things are, Progressivism sets its bearings upon the way it thinks things should be. These are two different mentalities speaking two different languages. And their implications are not limited to the political theater. In fact, they are recognizable as the dueling elements within every mind, therefore the interplay between them can arise in any problem begging solution, whether between people or within the self. Listen carefully to the supportive statements of the next shouting match you witness. Not all, but most of them will have escalated because these two languages do not communicate with one another, so all that is left for judgment’s conclusion is shear volume of presentation. Yet those discussions which remain calm, collected, and orderly usually involve using an organized presentation of relevant factors to empirically test theories. The latter is the frame of mind we bring to God when He calls, “Come, let us reason together,” (Isa 1:18) and it is the frame of mind Paul exhorts many times in the New Testament when he tells us to agree with one another. It is also the frame of mind which brings peace to your own inner struggles.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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