April 27, 2011
Read My Lips
When talk show hosts allow their guests to talk over one another I usually hit the mute button on the remote. Recently during one shouting match, rather than the full screen showing guests sitting across from one another, they were displayed on a split screen. I muted the talking heads and then I watched two sets of lips moving simultaneously. It was obvious that even the deaf would have had trouble grasping the talking points. Maybe talk show hosts should take a page from Paul’s instructions on orderly worship. “And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged.” (1 Cor 14:30-31 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I love good discussions. They are more useful for the information and concepts they offer than they are for their resolutions. The more a discussion abides by the principles which make it good, the more topical insight it offers. The more it strays from those principles, the more it offers attitudinal insight. Whether or not a discussion is well behaved, then, I find something useful to take from it, regardless of resolution.
-----The first principle of a good discussion, in fact, is to enter it with low expectations of reaching resolutions. The expectations can be raised as its parties are found to be abiding by good principles. This reduces the emotional pressures that often turn discussions into arguments.
-----You’ve pointed out the second principle. Speak concisely one at a time, and all carefully listen at once. Self-control means everything in a discussion, and the more you practice it the more the other parties will tend to follow.
-----The third principle is carefully using the rules of logic. Precise measurement is certainly acknowledged in the mathematics of our educational system, otherwise buildings would topple, airplanes would not fly, cakes wouldn’t rise, and bridges would crumble. That the physical necessities of life depend upon it is clearly apparent. Yet the conceptual necessities of culture and society just as much depend upon information’s precise fit with intuition. Logic is the mathematics for building these non-physical structures within any interrelating group of people. The ignorance of it has resulted in wars, murders, thefts, manipulations, sinking economies, and a general disregard for the simple humanity of the folks around us.
-----The fourth principle is humility. Humility is the willingness to submit one’s own concepts quickly to any discovery of actual reality. It is in fact a search for so doing. This is why humility is so systemic in the Bible’s discussion of salvation and eternal life - God is the entire substance of reality.
------But arrogance seems to be more common than humility, and the rules of logic are well known by few. Most folks so mistake their own concepts for reality that they are rather horrified by anything contradicting them. Then this horror throws up random defenses, which having little logical skills to mount, ride high volume into the verbal fracas. When a discussion has reached this point it offers little substantive information, yet clearly exhibits character and attitudes.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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