Claude Lévi-Strauss visited an Indian tribe and asked them to draw a map of their village. Everybody draw the huts as a ring. But the ring was drawn in two inco

Claude Lévi-Strauss visited an Indian tribe and asked them to draw a map of their village. Everybody draw the huts as a ring. But the ring was drawn in two incompatible ways. Some emphasized a central gathering place in the middle of the village in their drawing, and drew the huts around that, some closer, some further away. Others drew a clear line between the village: the people on one side, and others on the other side. This is essential to how people conceptualize disagreement. At the root of the disagreement is something sacred, something taboo, which cannot be openly discussed. Some people consider others to be closer or further from the taboo. Other people think that there is a line that divides incompatible views about the taboo. The immediate reaction to this description is very likely to be a misunderstanding if you think about it in the context of an actual divide. Nobody is above the taboo, including you, although everybody thinks they are above the taboo. You cannot escape it with "logical thinking", because both sides conceptualize the taboo in incompatible ways. The logical thinking happens within this conceptualization. The immediate reaction is to blame one of the sides of the discussion of misunderstanding.