Thanks, Aeon! I actually wondered with this one if I was adding anything useful to the conversation but figured "what the hell, we'll see." Glad it landed and might be useful.
Somehow I've always had a pluralistic perspective: where does such open-mindedness come from? (Can virtue be taught? 😉) Could it be an insatiable curiosity about other people—a desire to understand what's going on with someone else's opinions and beliefs at the deepest coping-with-life level? Another thing that might be involved is an innate trust in one's own moral authority: entertaining to other ideas is not somehow going to hoodwink me into becoming some other person.
I can find vague echoes within my own heart of everything Those Conservatives believe. That's enough to get started with. What's hard to understand is why there are no barriers to actually hating people to the point of regarding certain groups as deserving of hardship and punishment. Yet, I suppose we wouldn't have the admonition to "love your neighbor" unless this has always been a problem.
Some on the left don't "engage" with people who "deny their humanity". But this quickly leads to dehumanizing the perceived dehumanizers. I'm concerned with the Manichean character of popular cultural metaphysics. Rationalism has beaten religion into the ground, but for some reason many have retained the belief in superstitious absolutes of Good and Evil, which they then apply to their neighbors. Mature religions moderate this, for example by teaching that we're all at fault, but at the same time are paradoxically created in the image of God.
If we're going to dismiss the time-tested teachings of religion, any new humanism must somehow encompass these paradoxes.
One of your best posts.
Thanks, Aeon! I actually wondered with this one if I was adding anything useful to the conversation but figured "what the hell, we'll see." Glad it landed and might be useful.
Somehow I've always had a pluralistic perspective: where does such open-mindedness come from? (Can virtue be taught? 😉) Could it be an insatiable curiosity about other people—a desire to understand what's going on with someone else's opinions and beliefs at the deepest coping-with-life level? Another thing that might be involved is an innate trust in one's own moral authority: entertaining to other ideas is not somehow going to hoodwink me into becoming some other person.
I can find vague echoes within my own heart of everything Those Conservatives believe. That's enough to get started with. What's hard to understand is why there are no barriers to actually hating people to the point of regarding certain groups as deserving of hardship and punishment. Yet, I suppose we wouldn't have the admonition to "love your neighbor" unless this has always been a problem.
Some on the left don't "engage" with people who "deny their humanity". But this quickly leads to dehumanizing the perceived dehumanizers. I'm concerned with the Manichean character of popular cultural metaphysics. Rationalism has beaten religion into the ground, but for some reason many have retained the belief in superstitious absolutes of Good and Evil, which they then apply to their neighbors. Mature religions moderate this, for example by teaching that we're all at fault, but at the same time are paradoxically created in the image of God.
If we're going to dismiss the time-tested teachings of religion, any new humanism must somehow encompass these paradoxes.