I like words. I like long words, short words, funny words, and hard words. I like the way they feel when I say them. My favorite word to say to myself right now is "smag" ... the name of a dance company in Dayton... it just sounds so dirty and I can 'sit on' the 'A.' The Structuring (my dept) Word of The Day (which we've only ever had one of, as proclaimed by me) a few weeks ago was "pleonasm." That's a fun one, too. I was reading an article about some statements the FERC Chairman, Joseph Kelliher made and I found myself thinking, "Damn, this is a smart man. He really has his stuff together." This is as weird a reaction to a press conference for me as it is for you... so I began to wonder why I thought this dude was so cool, when it hit me. He had used the word "inchoate" in referring to arguments for electric re-regulation. The truth is that I just eat that shit up.
Being a lover of words, it is important that I use them either correctly or wrong on purpose. So, this morning I looked up the definition of "antithetical" to make sure I was using it right. Reading the definitions, I come across the words that will be guiding most of my spare time for the rest of the workday "Hegelian Dialectic." I encourage you to check the Wikipedia article on it, there is alot of good stuff in there. I'm going to move on to my own interpretations and conclusions about it, rather than sum it all up.
The part that got me, the part that really made it all sink in, was the 'criticism of dialectic' section. Specifically Karl Popper's critique that a dialectic will 'put up with contradictions.' Suddenly the spiral, negation of negation, my hang-up on doublethink, my issues with the concepts of good and evil, and my belief that nothing will teach you nothing all came together in a massive mental whirlwind leaving me the storm polished stone that I have a dialectic soul. Anyone that has had much in the way of serious conversations has discovered (often to their vexation) that I will happily stand on both sides of an argument. I also firmly believe that a significant amount of goodness is introduced into the world once a person's truths are in logical alignment. (I thought I had blogged about that recently, but maybe I only got half done and axed it). The most important part about my newfound understanding of a dialectic is that the goal is not to determine who is right... cause we both are and we both aren't. Lets line our truths up and shake out our falsities and make something better than either of us had to begin with.
I think almost all of the women that have danced with me have at one point or another heard my salsa catch-phrase. "No worries. What are we going to do? Win? At salsa?" It is an attitude that, like alot of realizations, has come with me off the dance floor. The shift from right/wrong to better/worse has profound repercussions. Taking a position of firmness and flexibility, as opposed to rigidity, has a tendency to encourage productive discussion... which is always a good thing.
The pursuit of truth, outside of the constructs of right and wrong, is the sole goal of any conversation
No comments:
Post a Comment