The Art of Discussion: Does anyone attempt to understand the other side anymore? A look at the Climate Change discussion.

CaptainTrouble

Based Member
I'm not sure if this is just a product of me getting older or if times changed. I remember a time when two people may have had a disagreement but both people ultimately wanted to improve the situation being argued about. Like, two generals in a battle having a disagreement about the best strategy to win the war but both generals ultimately working on the same team to win the war. Was this ever the situation in this life or is my memory deceiving me because I may have thought this is how people were arguing but in reality no one ever truly war arguing in this manner? I admit, I've stopped trying to understand the "other side" but it's only because I've felt any attempt I've made to listen to the other side is met with insincerity. Is that how many on "the other side" see things when discussing with someone like myself? Thus we both want to have a real discussion but we're both closed off to the potential because we both see each other as enemies before we start the discussion and then are far too defensive to ever listen.

Some things shouldn't be so difficult to discuss. Like, they should be simple yet they aren't. For example the climate change discussion should be a simple one, imo. If we assume GHG Emissions are causing the Earth to warm which will be disastrous for us and we could all die and GHG Produced anywhere in the world have the same impact on the Earth warming such that everyone, globally, needs to reduce GHG Emissions: then logically if 1 country reduces GHG Emissions but another country doesn't, it doesn't matter that the first country reduced GHG Emissions because the world will still end. This should be a logical fact that no one should argue with in a discussion but when discussing this topic with "the other side", they'll refuse to accept this fact because they are being defensive and don't want to be baited into what they believe is going to be some disingenuous discussion angle from "the other side" (relative to them). But if they simply accepted this, they might then simply point out that by reducing GHG Emissions themselves, they could buy more time for the world as a whole and perhaps by taking the moral high ground in reducing one's GHG Emissions despite the reducing in one's Quality of Life, it would show enough humanity that the rest of the countries would follow. This then posses the strategic question. Do we gamble the fate of humanity on the idea that the other side will simply do what's right because we chose to do what's right? Also, biding time for what exactly? If the world ends in 100 years, does it ending in 150 change anything? Is the sacrifice of the present worth those 50 years? Especially, since the people benefiting most from the 50 years are going to be the children of the country who refused to reduce GHG Emissions, while the children of the country that made the sacrifice are going to have a significantly worse Quality of Life because of the sacrifice their parents made.

Biding time to potentially find a way to reduce GHG Emissions without sacrificing Quality of Life. Asking all of humanity to reduce their quality of life to save a future they have no stake in is a tough sell but if we innovate technology that can reduce GHG Emissions without sacrificing Quality of Life, we'll be much more likely to get every country to buy-into this and we won't need to rely on the humanity of any country through our own sacrifice. Thus, perhaps a good strategic choice would be to divert all resources toward the countries with the best potential for technological development while reducing GHG Emissions everywhere else (and thus the Quality of Life of these people). This seems like an easy discussion to be had by people who are all supposedly working on the same team to promote what's best for their community. And you know as I'm typing this all out, something dawned on me. Perhaps, this is exactly the decision that our leaders already made but they aren't telling us they made this decision. Essentially, the Western World decided that all the best researchers and all the resources of the world should be diverted to Israel+USA in an attempt to solve the problem while essentially all other Western countries would sacrifice themselves so that Israel+USA could potentially innovate us out of the coming apocalypse. I wonder if this was decided because as you've probably noticed. The climate change agenda seems to have completely dropped off the typical discourse, as if the elites were discussing it, decided something and then want the public to no longer focus on it. China decided they should also have a chance at innovating their way out. Russia was supposed to sacrifice themselves for Israel+USA but decided not to. Our leaders lacked the capability to properly brign Russia to heel so there's now 3 main spheres competing to innovate us out of the Climate Change apocalypse. Iran saw this and wanted to be another Russia but Israel+USA said absolutely not because it was supposed to only be Israel+USA and China while Russia is essentially a waste of resources. An interesting thought, anyhow.

My point is that these are all things we should be able to discuss without much opposition and the different strategies should be openly debated with good intentions from both sides, yet, I don't see it. Am I alone in this? Anyone I talk to in-real-life about these issues is quick to dismiss things and immediately stops discussing them genuinely. I just don't understand why it seems so hard to have these sorts of reasonable conversations anymore.
 
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Why can’t we discuss matters more rationally like we used to? To me, it has to do with politics (defining friend/enemy) now being infused into all aspects of social life, unlike in the past where there seemed to be a bit more separation … you could easily be a ‘civilian non-combatant,’ politically speaking (not so anymore). Also, the exponential rise of the hardened (vs weak) NPC. To use myself as an example, I admit that I used to be a ‘weak’ NPC … I didn’t think much about politics, but when I did, I simply rehashed what ‘good people’ said about such things … I trusted the ‘studies’ cited by liberal sources without question. It wasn’t until I realized that I was being lied to, that I started questioning everything else and the whole thing fell apart like a house of cards. They say that if you want to enrage a conservative, lie to them, if you want to enrage a liberal, tell them the truth. I guess I was always a conservative at heart but didn’t know it. Unlike those like my former self, the hardened NPC will not entertain the possibility that they’ve been lied to; it doesn’t matter. They don’t care for the truth. They just want to fit in and will say and believe whatever they are told.
 
I think the NPC issue is larger than people realize. I think a lot of people don't understand politics nor do they want to but they realize politics is an issue that they should probably ought to have an opinion on so they parrot what "good" people say on issues as long as what's said sounds right.

If you think of mainstream media as AI. A person without a clue on politics essentially asked the AI to give them the rundown on politics and the AI spits out some paragraphs that they parrot in order to sound like they know what they're talking about. Then they double-down with these ideas because they don't want to sound stupid to admit they don't understand anything. It's not necessarily about trusting the institutions as much as it is about people just not wanting to sound entirely uninformed. This is especially true in a democracy. Imagine having the power to vote but understanding nothing you're voting for and then to admit that. This is why one of the least intelligent women I've ever met surprised me with some of the wisest words I've ever heard. She told me she doesn't understand politics so her beliefs in politics is to follow whoever is throwing the harder punches. Her meaning was that she just sides with the winning side in politics since she doesn't understand politics. I think this is how a lot of people truly are at politics but most people lack the honestly to admit this, unlike my surprising not so dim, dim-witted friend. To approach a conversation rationally, a person has to first be honest with what they understand about the topic being discussed and I don't think most people succeed at this simple first step.
 
Politics is the closest thing to religion your average Canadian has now. You used to be able to discuss things reasonably with people because they weren't yet political zealots.

Talking politics with your average Canadian is like trying to discuss religion with a true believer. They will not listen to you and will become more enraged as your heresies grow.

Conservatives are talking politics and liberals are talking religion, never gonna get anywhere under those terms.
 
I think the "it's like religion" is accurate. What I've noticed is that people seem to think that if they believe something hard enough and convince everyone else to believe it, that it'll make it true. In religion, this works because religion has no proof in reality. If everyone believes in God, then God exists for all intents and purposes. This is because even if no one believed in God, your reality wouldn't change aside from the acknowledgement of others that God exists or lack thereof. Thus the proof God exists in reality is the same whether everyone believes in God or not and thus if everyone believes in God then God exists for all intents and purposes. This is ultimately religion. The more people believe the story then the more the story is real.

People seem to think politics works the same way. If you believe immigrants are good, then they are good for all intents and purposes. We know this isn't true because we can analyze the cause and effect of immigrants on a macro-scale but your average person cannot. The idea of measuring cause-and-effect of politics outside of one's immediate senses is too difficult for many. That's why the only time the people come together on an issue, like carbon taxes, is when they can see the tax directly on their bill. This then becomes reality to them. The idea that more immigrants increases the supply of labor thus reducing labor cost (wages) and thereby causing their wage to go down is far too abstract for most people so their mind defaults to religion. If everyone believes immigrants help the economy and don't hurt wages then in their mind immigrants help the economy and don't hurt wages. When someone disbelieves this, it hurts the proof just like if someone disbelieves in God so in a lot of people's mind the object of politics isn't to rationally discuss them but it is instead to get everyone to believe what they want to believe so what they want to believe becomes the reality (even though it doesn't actually work like this).

This might suggest the solution to politics is creating an all encumbering framework (simulation almost) that attributes every aspect of a person's life to something related to politics. When you get your payroll statement for your wages, you get a detailed breakdown showing how much of your tax was paid to welfare, how much was your wage could have been if not for immigration, how the producer carbon tax affected your income, how GHG Emissions led to reduced wages etc... Only with full transparency such that people see and feel the impacts of politics can we break the "religion" of politics. This is probably why politics becomes so much more real to people when a country is at war rather than at peace because in peace times, your average person doesn't realize politics is even impacting every aspect of their life but in war, it's directly felt if they end up on the front-lines.
 
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And that's why I believe Christianity is the truth.

Look what has happened to every nation that abandons religion... Abandoning religion = Lower birth rates, Feminism, and Leftism.
The western world was a far better place when everyone or at least the vast majority were Christian.

Atheism just leads to leftism and no morals. Even Richard Dawkins who pushed Atheism admitted it was a mistake to do that because Atheism only works on first-world advanced Western people and weakens them.
 
@Chicken_Sandwich I don't think Christianity is the solution but I do believe a unified shared story is the solution. IMO, any religion would work so I'd actually rather create a better religion than Christianity with all its faults. However, this in itself is part of the problem. The "fight" to create a better religion rather than just accept Christianity causes problems. The Christians just want everyone to accept Christianity and some like myself want something better than Christianity. This create a "war" between stories that makes us all worse-off than if just one side capitulated but many Christians believe in Christianity so strongly they'd never give it up for something better so it's up to the people who want something better to simply surrender and accept Christianity but this isn't really a solution because we're here with the problem we face today because of Christianity's failure. Christians assert it's the people who failed Christianity but if Christianity wasn't such a failure then it wouldn't have lost the following of the people. This argument can go back and forth ad infinitum. I don't want to sound too arrogant and preachy but I'm quite confident God doesn't care what story his people believe is the truth in reaching him because God is every story all at once. Any story that connects the people together under God or Gods for that matter (since God is many Gods and one God all at once) works.

Ultimately, what we need is a shared story though that everyone is raised to believe so that everyone in our community can find commonality with one another through their shared experience within the story. Christianity is a framework for a story but so too are many other religions. The religion we choose as the framework for the story is less important than simply picking a story and having everyone stick to it.

I think one of the biggest issues with Christianity is that the leaders of Christianity are not our people. A religion must be oversaw and shaped by people with similar genetics as yourself if that religious story is to work to be shared between all people of that group. Having people not of your race as the guides and masters of the story meant to guide your race is doomed to failure and that's where Christianity went sideways but one needs to consider that the subversion done by this group to Christianity may have been so great that it might be better to start fresh and build a better religion.
 
Like others have said it’s because everything down to what shoes you wear is now political, which is the new religion. If a discussion goes political I’ll just listen and not engage, if asked I play dumb and say I’ve never heard that/new to me. Certain topics like climate change, Alberta separation bad but Quebec good for exercising sovereignty, Carney=Trudeau=LPC….not even worth your energy; I’m not getting roped into a college debate on “buying Canadian made ketchup to save the country” at my in-laws thanksgiving dinner.
 
It's communism. Plain and simple. In the Soviet Union, if you happen to express your disdain for the bread line to your local Party representative, there would be no discussion. However you might end up disappearing suddenly for no reason at all.
 
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