The Thomas Chronicles

I have often wondered to myself amid all the partisanship, “What is the point of reasoning with diametrically opposing viewpoints?” For that matter, in the micro, what is the use of reasoning with people in interpersonal affairs when almost no one seem to be listening? Immediately as I write this I can see just how far down the path of cynicism I have gone for such thoughts to occur to me. However, even now, I think this observation illuminating, cynical as it is.

One of the salient characteristics of Rome before it fell was the ubiquitous presence in the letters and diaries of senators and generals on down to the common plebeian of how men refused to listen. Everyone vied for their agenda and their immediate wants and appetites. The Roman legions could have smashed the barbarian tides at any time, except that by that time, the Roman legions were composed mainly of mercenaries, who themselves came from barbarian tribes. While Romans indulged themselves and fed off the fat accrued from previous generations, Rome collapsed.

I don’t know if we are at yet another similar turning point in the affairs of men, but ominously, like Rome, I am hearing on all sides how people are not listening. All the shouting and hollering gives it away. There have been many a night where I’ve come home wearied from work, flipped on the boob-tube and immediately beat a retreat. I wielded my remote control with deadly accuracy and depressed the OFF button before yet another utterance can escape a disembodied talking head.

For a brief five arduous minutes, I was treated to another episode of Hannity versus Colmes. I used to like Sean Hannity when I first started to listen to him five years ago over the radio in Houston. He illuminated the hypocrisy of the Left very well, and his frankness was very refreshing to hear given the eggshell tip-toeing I’ve had to do for four years in college. Then on the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, something happened to his manner and rhetoric. He stopped listening. His interviews became methods of interrogation of the “Aha! Gotcha!” variety, and he won’t be questioned. He behaves like an Inquisitor trying to force a square block into a round slot; the more it resists, the harder he shoves.

Alan Colmes, on the other hand, seemed reasonable when I first saw him as well. He was definitely liberal, leaning Left, but he still tried to be a decent, fair chap. As the years progressed, however, his mental decline coincided with the Left seizing control of the Democratic Party. He forced his mind into accepting patently contradictory ideas and insisted on very dishonest positions of moral equivalence. He never keeps refrain of “Isn’t-that-the-same-as…” far from his reach. As a consequence of having to blank out a host of inconvenient facts, Colmes’s mental faculties has been reduced to finding smarmy logical loopholes around arguments to insist it’s all the same. Barring that, he’d just talk over his guests, just like Hannity.

Neither listens very well. I’m sure they both are acting from genuine conviction, but I’m not so sure their methods are laudatory.

But this lack of listening isn’t limited exclusively to the universe of the politically charged news personalities. It’s pandemic to our society, from top to bottom. No one is listening.

What then would be the utility of reasoning when men have willfully shuddered their ears and blinded their eyes? Truth discovered through reason does not compel action any longer, and forcing others to see these truths becomes counter-productive. That’s immediately apparent when others start forcing back.

One of the primary reasons these power-driven arguments exist is because people no longer agree on self-evident truths, or if your rather, people refuse to accept the same premises and stand on common ground. To quote the post-modernists, there is no unified “grand narrative” which everyone accepts. Lacking a unified “grand narrative”, liberals and conservatives, Democrat and Republican, mailroom clerk and office executive, peasant and overlord— they try to force their own version of the “grand narrative” down the throats of others, or else ignore everyone and sink into becoming a lumpy connoisseur of their appetites, enslaved, as it were, to their stomach.

If you cannot agree on premises, no matter the goodwill, conversations would be without substance.

The utility reasoning only comes into play once both parties agree on premises, and this usually involves how one views the world. A subjectivist and an absolutist cannot agree being from two diametrically contradictory views of the world, but two absolutist can agree that the world is round and proceed to reason from there.

You see, you need a point of reference, like in sailing, to navigator human discourse. This necessitates an objective view of the world since relative views would lead a poor besotted fellow in circles without any bearings. I find that conversations between two relativists are liken to two blind men wandering through the world arguing whether or not the sky is actually a cheerful shade of green.

Once agreed on premises, however, reasoning becomes a great aid. It can clear obstructions to understanding, resolve frustrations, and illuminate truths about human nature and the world around us. Reasoning with each other aids us in coping with the rigors of life, and it delights us when it occasionally opens out vast oases of insight and beauty, some qualities that can only filter to us through our intellect.

Humanity rests in what we hold in common— not in what divides us, not what makes us oh-so wonderfully unique and special. If I may be so bold, the lack of humanity around us stems from men wanting to be worshiped as infallible gods. Never wrong. Never questioned. Truly, what is relativism and subjectivism but men grasping after godhood by trying to remake the world in their own image, even if it only exists in their splendorous minds?

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