I no longer think I fundamentally believe in conversation. I don’t think it serves the purposes people purport. In fact, I think in a majority of instances, it tends to make situations worse. Despite this, I think conversations all follow the exact same patterns across all topics, and it’s one of the greatest disservices we perpetuate against ourselves to not explore and acknowledge how things break down.
I want to distinguish what I hope to explain from “persuasive rhetoric.” You can take classes that will coach you in polite engagement with your Congressmen who deny climate science. It’s where you go to learn not to assert facts and truth, but instead hide what you want to do in language they understand. This whole game I’m hoping to avoid. It’s not my contention that people can’t be convinced of things or that they don’t operate under “different rationality” that takes into account the protecting of their oil money donors.
I contend that we never start on the same page. The presumption of a shared language keeps the initial ground for conversation obscure. After all, you’re under the impression you read English. These lines are passing by and you’re hoping I’ll get into the meat or towards a point. This is precisely where we screw up first. You have assumptions, unconsciously or otherwise, that you take into reading this. If we know each other, the weight of your opinion about me remains. If we don’t, and this is on a public website, 3 paragraphs in I can already hear Youtube vine compilations calling your name.
Words are not concrete, literally and figuratively. You may it take it for granted that words are wide, but when you use them, you have a pretty definite feeling for what you mean, even if no one else does.
“People can be rational.”
Leaving aside that there are volumes of philosophical and psychological works that deal with that “simple” premise, the gist of it is that we should be able to relate to each other. It’s a huge should. I certainly don’t agree with it as a premise because I carry philosophical and psychological baggage to my conception of rationality. I get picky and say “can” has nothing to do with it. I can take a shit. I can watch TV. I can vote for fascism. So? I would never propose an idea to you that I wanted seriously discussed by insisting “something can happen!”
We’re not on the same page. Rationality, let alone the conscious agent claiming it has it, needs rules. Rationality needs to be contingent on something besides “merely existing.” The neighborhood cat is rational in that it doesn’t routinely dart out into traffic. Does a cat that does run into traffic get stripped of its rationality? Or is the conversation more coherent when you set down rules and reasons for its behavior? The cat isn’t “more or less” rational because of how long it lives avoiding getting hit.
I feel pressed to keep discussing animals, because people like to pretend they aren’t animals. I was literally told that people can’t be trained like dogs. It was never walked back. The idea being that people are “better” or “more rational” than dogs and that by virtue of it being rude to equate the two, there’s nothing else to be said about how they behave. I honestly have so few words for this; if you don’t see how it doesn’t work, just stop reading now and never read anything I write again.
You are not rational. I am not rational. We have incomplete malleable mounds of meat that will happily carry on in whatever direction they’ve been set. Without knowledge, without intention, without understanding, they can just “be” and in a world that needs knowledge, intention, and understanding, that “simply being” is negative. It’s the idiot smiling at the row station when all hands need to move us through the storm.
For one reason or another, I posit undue sympathy, apologists for this lazy and simple non-rower will get very indignant if you’re not happy about their goofy smile. They’ll insist, “He has so much potential!” They’ll say, “His arms are so big! His capacity to row is so great!” The moment you call him a lazy stupid smiling idiot, they’ll attack you! He’s not rowing and they’re attacking you! The storm is coming, we’re going too slowly, and you’re to blame insisting this idiot needs to get to work and they need to stop protecting him.
That barely describes the disconnection in how we discuss things with each other. It’s so needlessly tired to keep blaming me for sounding angry or shitty. Angrier than your fucking fascist President? Angrier than your state representatives who want to bury fetal tissue? Am I shittier than the people who made money speech and don’t believe we share the environment? Because those are the stakes. It’s life and death whether you can figure out how to pull your head out of your ass and recognize those who aren’t rowing for what they are. Dead weight that ensure we’re going to kill ourselves.
I will never feel sympathy if you can’t do that. I will never change my mind if you can’t put the square block through the square hole. I refuse to be gaslit. Because that’s what you’re doing. In service to your own dogma, you refuse to call out what the real problem is. You can’t see it because you predicate your whole window into the world on it. “It’s not my responsibility, God will save me.” “I was taught this way, and it’s the only way I know or respect.” “My feelings deserve to be heard! Especially because I honestly cry myself to sleep each night worried about what will happen to all the white children forced to mix with the little nigger scourge!”
I think I’ve just been lying to myself the whole time. I mean, I was able to stop discussing religion with people. But perhaps it’s for everything. We already know thermometers don’t work when you represent oil companies. Why should this stress me out any more than it seems to those poor thermometers? If they could speak, right? Imagine the smear pieces of the elitist condescending hot heads who just need to understand not everyone’s been socialized to see the merit of discussing things in Celsius.
I’m not wrong. I’m justified in my anger. I’m not going to apologize for being smarter or more informed than you. If you don’t know how the brain works, keep beating your dick to the idea that humans can’t be trained, and trained to do the wrong thing. If you think your definition of “rationality” is all-knowing and perfect and that you’re the only one with the capacity for wisdom, here’s the keys to the crazy pants building, I’ve literally bought 5 acres in the middle of nowhere because I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with you anymore. You’ll spend your entire life watching people live and die by the bat shit proclamations any ignorant monkey who hasn’t had their face rubbed in enough shit can make. The alternative is to run and pray any hitchhikers desperate to get away as well won’t need to be shot before you get somewhere safe.
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