Category: Cultural Priorities

Common Ground

“…a world without bias would be flat and dull and monotonous,” so if you think this pic is oversaturated, maybe the world has too much bias… or could it be you simply see a world with too much bias?

Featured Photo Credit: analogicus on Pixabay

Click here to read On Bias
Click here to read Crossed Purposes

On Bias: Epilogue. Common Ground

Look at the feature photo, with its glowing colours and rays of magical sunlight, etc etc.

Someone might argue that a certain ‘bias’ is partial to the orange-red colours on the left side while another certain ‘bias’ is partial to the lush green on the right. Even to suggest Fall and Spring is merely my interpretation, and you’d be free to take it or leave it. And fair enough, which is really the point: all of this is simply chocolate-vanilla, everyone with their own preference, which is the broader point I’ve been making: everybody is biased. It’s a trait we all have in common. Not whether you prefer Fall to Spring or vice-versa or even something else, not even about this particular photo because maybe you prefer Winter or Summer, or maybe you prefer real roads in real forests versus photographed roads in photo-shopped forests. But whatever it is you or I or anyone prefers, we each lay claim to our own.

Then we support our claims… as I mention in the photo caption, someone might argue that the colours are just too saturated, that this photo has been edited to make those rays of sunshine seem almost heavenly or something. In my English class, I might have supported this by noting that the photo is taken from the ground-level, not the treetops, or I might have pointed out how the road curves, suggesting some lack of omniscience, as if we can only remember out-of-sight places we’ve been or imagine not-yet-in-sight places we’re going – whatever, it doesn’t matter. Since the photo editor isn’t likely in the room with us anyway, the specific interpretation is not the point so much as simply having an interpretation at all.

We interpret at all because we’re biased, and interpreting is a step in learning. If you don’t value learning, stop reading now, and sorry to have used up your time. But if you do value learning, if you’re curious as to what’s around that curve in the road ahead, then don’t stop here too long, just admiring the trees or basking in the glow: imagine, predict, and wonder, then interpret, then share, and listen and reflect and discuss. That is education. And then follow up further on your own. That is study: imagine, predict, and wonder some more, and come back to interpret, and share, and listen and reflect and discuss, then follow up further on your own with study… see how this works, this process of study and education and further study and further education?

One outcome of this process would not only be a pretty revealing insight into one’s own character but also the possible character of the photo editor who likely wasn’t even in the room with you:

  1. the editor is someone who values heavenly connection, or
  2. the editor is someone who wants to suggest they value heavenly connection, or
  3. the editor is someone who wants us to think they value heavenly connection, or
  4. the editor is someone who wants others to be reminded of heavenly connection, or
  5. the editor is someone who wants to…

We can’t know, of course, because even if the editor were in the room with us, they may withhold their particular motives behind this photo. Nevertheless, say we gather a sense of their previous editing work and build a case toward their possible motives in this case, from which we could suggest further possibilities: if (1), (2), (3), and (4) all happen to be true, the suggestion could be that the editor is someone who values heavenly connection. However, if only (3) by itself is true, the suggestion could be that what the editor values is not necessarily heavenly connection but rather the kind of impression they aim to lay upon others.

And on it goes, limited only by our imagination, suggestions about the possible interpretations any one of us may have about this decision by a photo editor regarding an element in a photo, with each possible interpretation as revealing about we who interpret as about the editor we characterise or the photo we parse.

But bias is not the interpretation you have or even the interpretation you prefer after hearing a few, even if that amounts to Hmm, I’m not too sure just now; this is often attributed to us as our opinion, but bias is more than that. Bias is the plainer fact that – at every given moment – everyone will have some kind of interpretation. Bias is the nature in its entirety that one perspective exists distinctly from any others, the very nature that an individual occupies a vantage, a perch from which to perceive, a point-of-view that cannot be simultaneously occupied but only shared by another, except maybe on Star Trek. Bias is the finite oneness that is ‘you’, which cannot be ‘me’ or any ‘one’ else because we all each have this very same oneness. This finite limitation, this scope of ‘who I am’, this boundary that distinguishes ‘what is me’ from ‘what is not me’, and to which we each lay claim, this is our bias.

Our bias: we can inform it, we can expand it, we can manage our way within it, but we can neither eliminate it nor overcome it because we are not infinite. We might help ourselves feel better by telling each other, “No limits!” especially as this inspirational cheer salutes the fight against social injustice and cultural oppression, which is a current dominant motive, the sentiment of which to encourage and motivate people is appreciable. Yet having opened the door that this perspective opens, where it aims I fear is not where it ultimately leads: “No limits!” suggests infinite capability, which is literally impossible and, thereby, ironic. We are not infinite. We have limits, and the cheer “No limits!” may better be amended to “Educate and study!” But who’d ever shout that, much less put it on a placard or a t-shirt?

If the difference between ‘Our bias is our limitation’ and ‘Our limitation is our bias’ is one of perspective, then it’s also one of misunderstanding or perhaps even simply wishing away human characteristics.

I wrote about something close to this once before, where again a simple reversal of phrase is more than just clever word play. It’s literally about life and living and enacting who we are.

I don’t know why Bible Hub sets its Commentaries page with the King James version – it wouldn’t be my first choice translation, but they list 22 across the top of every page, so take your pick.

From Doomberg – “On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity”

From Doomberg – “On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity”

One blog-type source I’ve found worthy of my time is Doomberg, the “anonymous publishing arm of a bespoke consulting firm providing advisory services to family offices and c-suite executives.” Somewhat aside, I suppose even an apparent commendation of wealth on my part sets me in somebody’s crosshairs, as much about them as about me, and hey, such is the culture we’ve evidently decided ourselves into. From my perspective as a doctoral student, indebted and broke, I’m able to note how ably I remain aware of my privilege, even when it’s not being pointed out for me. Indeed, from any number of perspectives, our culture today seems doggedly fixed on this point, and just who am I to misstep?

Asides aside, I offer this post with no small trepidation: for Doomberg’s being hosted on Substack, which has come to face a wave of criticism all its own – make that waves of criticism – I similarly risk my head beneath the punctiliously sharpened guillotine of on-line blood-letting. Somewhat aside, I suppose any cancel cult reference has me residing in somebody’s ideological oubliette, which is a fancy word for gaol. From my perspective as an on-line blogger, I wonder how aware anybody is of my other posts, by which I mean each of them as well as all of them – then again, no one can say it all / know it all / do it all in one go in one go. If I’m being honest, in wondering whether our cultural discipline will task itself to read anything beyond 140 characters, what I really wonder is how ably we’re able to reflect upon nuance: remember, before fear took over, this post started two paragraphs ago as something shared.

[Aside: one thing I noted about five of those articles critiquing Substack was their being published inside three days of each other, plus two others inside three weeks of that, all of which any good conspiracist would tell you smells like a campaign, and which I imagine any run-of-the-mill marketer would tell you is trendy, but which I could see Substack simply writing off as ‘good press’. But as all this only amounts to five (plus two to make seven) out of eight, here’s one more from the seemingly disconnected dog days of summer, just for good measure. As for me, I suppose I might consider all this, more clinically, as free speech, for which in all likelihood somebody’s conniving to doom my blog privilege – which reminds me…]

One thing about Doomberg that’s held my attention thus far is an intensive approach throughout their catalogue to detail with accuracy, as well as a wider cross-disciplinary scope on the path to holism – I suppose that’s really two things but I can already hear l’épouvante du Grand Sanson over the din of ravenous mindshare and thought it prudent not to gush. Naturally, what I mean by “accuracy” is open to “interpretation,” and what recourse for this but to stand amidst the entirety of context: I’ve tried my darnedest thus far to craft an intensively thorough catalogue of my own. As for my regular audience… if such a thing exists, for one thing, thanks! For another, I must trust that they’re gradually reaching some understanding of what I value and who I am. Lately, I will say if anyone’s been detecting a tone of frustration or fatigue – you know who you are – then maybe you and I are interpreting some things the same way – the beauty of which doesn’t need to mean we agree on details.

I also like Doomberg’s irreverence, which is probably the only comparison I’d dare make to the sort of thing I try to post here on The Rhetorical WHY.

Sadly, though, the tone of this article (March 05, 2022), “On the Cusp of an Economic Singularity,” falls decidedly away from irreverence toward a more eponymous sense of… well, eponymy.

I will draw attention to two other small comparisons: the first is an early-life fascination with astronomy that led me, like Doomberg, to admiring Stephen Hawking’s accessible book; the second is a precise image of falling dominos, something I found equally à propos, if not nearly as doomish, around this time last year. Well, okay, about the same doomish.

You’ll only have a few more weeks to check out Doomberg for free before they institute their paywall, which is sort of the blogger’s impossible, as the kids would say these days. As for me, I’ll remain on this lowly free platform, at least a little while longer… still a little too chicken to spread those wings and fly.

Decisions, Decisions

Featured Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

Where margins are thought of as something like the political left or right, I wonder whether Aristotle would have us default to a more centred position. I can hear him now… the centre as a virtuous place to dwell, and then the margins, which gradually tend to widen toward greater vice, be it a deficiency of too little or an excess of too much.

In fairness, I suspect he’d also grant that pushing and pulling from the margins is what steers the middle course, as in the margins are essential – albeit marshalled by the strictures of “a certain principled inflexibility” by which a centred majority maintains its stability. As such, any move out from centre would seem to oblige careful consideration of multiple perspectives and possible outcomes on behalf of everybody by which, really, I mean everybody.

But, as more people come to critique the milquetoast middle – do-nothings whose tolerance is negligence by omission – so also more people tend to vacate the central fringe. The margins populate and steer more massive moves – more volatile moves – in what must come to resemble the anomie of culture war.

At this point, I am assuming readers cast the stage with a host of their favourite players… and yes, well, need I say more.

From the centre, Aristotle would suggest – and, indeed, from any established centre – what can help a decision to vacate the middle for a margin is phronesis, our practical wisdom, which resides within us as a simultaneous dynamic: an acuity of discernment and a benevolence in the weighing of options. Phronesis is exercised in a process he called praxis, a committed act of ‘doing’ informed by reflective ‘thinking’. In an instance of vacating the centre, practical wisdom – yours, mine, anybody’s – could help determine at the given moment which margin to favour for some particular reason.

And, as I said, if we’re right to inform any such decision by accounting for more than one perspective, then our so-called ‘best’ decisions would seem to be our most informed decisions, irrespective of an eventual outcome… albeit with a certain flexibility of principle to be weighed by pragmatics – it’s ‘practical’ wisdom, remember? We’re not wisdom machines.

You wouldn’t believe how many spheres on Google seem to be there thanks to math.

So here let’s grant margins beyond the fatuous dichotomy of political left and right. In fact, let’s think of anyone’s position as centred to every direction in a sphere of infinite margins, where any one direction is uniquely no other, no matter how slightly another tangent may point: for some, this is nuance; for others, pedantic babbling and, for those, I have but two words: perspicacious circumspection. Ah-ha yes, well… for someone located in their centre, listening seems virtuous, too.

All this is not a matter of act but a matter of character. Practical wisdom informing decisions is a nuanced thing: why to act, why under the present circumstances to choose ‘this’ margin and not ‘that’ one. This kind of nuance we often call ‘the Why’, and it’s distinctly different from some marginal course change that evacuates the centre – the latter strictly an outcome, the former a reasoned weighing of possible outcomes. In so many words: when a chosen course is an outcome of practical wisdom, it’s not the other way-round. But nuance is anathema to ideology whereas stupid is as stupid does.

When logic rests upon a false ‘either/or’ dilemma, act supersedes wisdom, and criticism can only be aimed at outcome because decision – while not entirely removed from our responsibility – is severely curtailed: your false dilemma is my ultimatum.

Character suffers at the hands of dogma, and if he were around today, I can only speculate that Aristotle would feel a little hard done by for being so alone in a world of centres. It’s never easy being the silent minority, not when your silence is really just a drowned-out appeal that goes unheard.

Click here to read Enacting ‘the WHY’