[lit-ideas] Fwd: How do we build on agreement? [Was Why philosophy?]
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:11:30 +0900
John Wager has already replied to a truncated version of this message that
made it to the list. I send it again in the full form in which it was
written.
John
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 9:08 AM
Subject: How do we build on agreement? [Was Why philosophy?]
To: wokshevs@xxxxxx
An interesting dilemma this morning. How to reply to Eric and Walter, whose
most recent messages are filled with sentiments with which I wholly agree
and find most convivial as well? I find myself reflecting on conversational
habits and wondering why it is so much easier to disagree than to build on
what someone else has said. It is, somehow, as if agreement triggers a full
stop--end of story--instead of presenting itself as a starting point for
further development.
I recall Kazuhiko Kimoto, the Senior Creative Director who hired me at
Hakuhodo, pulling my aside one day to say that there are two kinds of
arguments. In one, which he illustrated by knocking his fists together, the
discussion goes nowhere. In another, which he illustrated by holding out his
hand palm down, placing his other hand over it, then pulling the lower hand
out and placing it on top, then repeating the process over and over, so that
his hands rose steadily into the air, progress is made; new ideas emerge.
Is it just that we live in what linguist Deborah Tannen has labeled an
argument culture, exacerbated by litigious or violent conflict models in
mass entertainment and a 24-hour news machine that depends on confrontation,
instead of agreement, for news? Is it simply a vertebrate habit to respond
more quickly to threat than to opportunity? Or is it, as Zygmunt Bauman
suggests, that intellectuals' embrace of critique as their primary function
has left the space within which rational discourse was possible in ruins?
Whatever the causal factors in play--and as usual they seem to be
multiple--I find myself reverting to Kimoto-san's gestures and suddenly
realizing that one hand placed over the back of another does not imply the
acceptance of palm placed on palm, a gesture that would signal agreement and
end the discussion.
Can we learn how to give each other the backs of our hands without slaps in
the face? How could we go about that?
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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