Post No. 2,785 - Flawed truths and not listening carefully enough

A few weeks ago I watched a video which proposed three extra senses. The details of those are not relevant to this post so I won't link to the video, but it did prompt recollection of a comment in Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking” along the lines that thinking could be considered a sense. 

I had a mild sense of wariness, which I interpreted as “make sure you credit the original source”, so I tracked down the reference, and posted a comment along the lines of thinking also being a sense, and credited both the original source and that I had found it via Brendan Myers’ course. 

And ignored the residual wariness ... until I quite rightly got jumped on for the white supremacism and other bigotries of the source - specifically, ableism. I didn’t know about all the problems of that person, so it was a useful, if salutary lesson - two actually: one about the person, and another about not ignoring any mild sense of unease ...

Now, I’m not going to give that person, deceased though they are, nor their cause the oxygen of publicity, so I will just refer to them as R_ S_, and you can look up the links if you want to know more (although, in another example of ableism, R_ S_’s ableism is not mentioned ... ). 

All this led to further reflection along the lines of: 

at what stage does a source become so polluted that cannot use anything of theirs?

As an extreme example, the n___’s (mis)use of (a slightly modified) version of the s_ means it cannot be used by most people, despite it being a sacred symbol in several South and East Asian religions (and blogger’s sensitivities mean I am wary of naming the symbols or those who desecrated it).

R__ling has damaged her legacy through her hatred of trans people. 

And in a somewhat greyer example, some of the activist and social change concepts (especially the applications of nonviolent resistance - which is a concept developed by others, including Tolstoy) of Gandhi are still useful - but Gandhi was a sexual pervert - which I discussed here.

Do we need the perspective of chronological distance to assess this?

Maybe. 

I consider there is more to it, though - alignment or not with personal values is an issue covering usage. 

For example, I see Nietzsche getting quoted often, but I consider that person’s values to be terrible. 

I ended my post about Gandhi with the following: 

My key points from those quotes, for the consideration of current leaders, are: 

• the means shape the ends, and leaders have a duty of care for the means used. This obliges one to take the longer term view, and, if the short term outcome will harm the ultimate end, desist; 
• consider the state of being of those one is leading as much as the aims one is trying to achieve; 
• communication has many forms: use that which is most appropriate (not necessarily "most effective", given the need to consider means and ends); 
• pragmatism has many forms: some are good, some neutral, and some harmful. Use the good - that which fights evil (on that, see here); 
• admit to mistakes, and learn from them.
  

Others will, of course, see other lessons, quite likely of equal or greater validity 😊

Right now, despite considering there to be potentially useful information in some of R_ S_’s material, I consider that of insufficient value to justify using that one minor comment relayed by Brendan Myer, so I edited it out of my comment and thanked the person who brought the matter to my attention. 

And I will pay better attention to my feelings, including those of wariness, in future ...  

 

PS - not identifying the source is not, in my opinion, an acceptable option

 

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

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