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It’s dialectical thinking and phrasing, described in its most basic state in the modern era by Fichte (commonly credited to Hegel). Disciplining oneself to rej
by rgrieselhuber 4y ago
It’s dialectical thinking and phrasing, described in its most basic state in the modern era by Fichte (commonly credited to Hegel).
Disciplining oneself to reject all dialectic (harder than it sounds) can go a long way to freeing oneself from a wide variety of crafted narratives.
- PaulHoule 4y agoI think about the introduction of How to be an anti-racist that explicitly sets up a racist/anti-racist dialectic and effectively defines "racism" as "anti-blackism"
- rgrieselhuber 4y agoIn any of these examples, it effectively creates a closed-loop definition, cutting off all external references or bases, where the definition of the dialectical terms is set by whomever happens to hold the most power and influence in the topic at hand.
- yamrzou 4y agoYes, because whoever controls the meaning of words wins: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/a-little-game-theory-on-discursive https://wyclif.substack.com/p/a-little-game-theory-on-discur...
- PaulHoule 4y agoI'm not sure if anybody wins in this case.
- meowkit 4y agoWhich is the core of why these power games are so dumb yet dangerous. Divisive narrative battles seem to spiral out in a vicious cycle until a group splits into tribes/echo chambers. The large battles continue until one side is conquered (materially - via financial or physical means). And even if a side wins, it is now suspect to splintering and the process starts all over again. I imagine this pattern is very old and it's only now on these rapid time scales enabled by the internet are we able to clearly recognize and discuss it more broadly.
- k__ 4y agoAny resources on rejecting dialectic?
- bowsamic 4y agoVimalakirti sutra EDIT: for something more recent: Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
- k__ 4y agoAnything a bit more recent? Like, Marx-recent?
- naravara 4y agoMarx is the opposite of the kind of reference you want if you want to reject dialectical thinking. That was Marx's whole deal.
- k__ 4y agoAh. What I wanted to say was: I know a bunch of people who argument from Marx perspective of dialectical thinking. But the comment I replied to gave me the impression, dialectical thinking was fundamentally flawed. So, I was interested where this flaw lies and how it might proof Marx wrong.
- rgrieselhuber 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31479769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31479769
- rgrieselhuber 4y agoAnother work that is more formal is Maximus’s Ambigua, written largely in response to Origen’s Neoplatonism. Origen was rather fixated on the idea of either precarnate good vs. fallen flesh (those are your two options, another version of Gnosticism basically). Maximus offers the solution of transcending simple dialectics because free will allows one to choose from more than one good. In general, discomfort with ambiguity and free will reveals a lot about a person, society, organization, etc.