RE: The Happening Continues to Happen and Now it Has a Name!
What would you suggest be done with the heretics?
Personally I'm known for arguing and calling people out, as are most of my friends. Many times I find out that I'm wrong, or that I do not understand the topic as much as I thought I did, but having that discussion helps both parties come to the truth. Situations do exist where it is best to just nod and pretend that you don't know anything but as a culture we tend to do nod and smile too much. We subconsciously care more about offending other people more the reaching the truth. This becomes extremely problematic when in an academic setting, this refusal to challenge false ideas is what has people believing in all sorts of failed ideologies such as the my earlier example
Maybe you are right, but just to play devils advocate for a moment, what about voluntary communes? I believe in the '70s their were many groups of hippies that tried that kind of thing out for a while, and at the times that it didn't go all helter skelter, the worst that happened was that in addition to sharing everything, they also shared each others STDs. Do you think voluntary communes can exist without imposing a ruling class?
You're forgetting that the hippies were all on LSD, which made the people with the good LSD the ruling class
LOL
One way of looking at this discussion is in two parts:
In order to blast out a fact (which may or may not be correct, depending on whether or not you are correct), you only need to consider the first. If you actually want to persuade most people, you must consider the second part. Psychology plays into this, so things like approach, subject beliefs, phrasing, tone of voice, body language, and conversational reciprocity will play a part in this.
Some people, of course, "data exchangers", don't need the hand holding, and for these people, you can just blast out reality as you see it, expect the same, vigorously argue it, and then make conclusions (all absent emotion, largely, as data exchange does not require emotion.) A group of these people is a powerful intellectual force indeed.
Well said!