Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Looking Past People To Ideas

No one intelligent fails to look past the messenger to the actual ideas being communicated, regardless of the gender, skin color, age, tone of voice, or personal history of the person conveying information.  No one intelligent even believes that purely logical truths cannot be discovered and grasped without the help of social prompting, but this does not mean there is no need for or benefit to actually talking with others about even the most basic, foundational facts that verify themselves (logical axioms and the fact that one exists as a conscious mind).  Anyone who does not look past the identity of the person communicating with them to ideas when affirming or rejecting them does not deserve to have their thoughts shared with others.

There are many ways a person might persuade themselves to act like whoever is making a claim is more important than the claim itself.  Some parents dismiss things simply because their children said them; some children might do this with their parents as well.  Some people think having a certain skin color or certain genitals literally makes you unable to even merely understand or relate to human beings who happen to have different skin colors or genitals.  Some people are shallow enough to assume that another person must be right or wrong based on some irrelevant factor like age, wealth, fame, or social backing, or perhaps whether they are perceived to be "normal" or not by some arbitrary personal or societal standard.

One does not have to go far in modern Western life to see many examples of this all across many cultural divides.  Conservative parents, for example, tend to pretend that a child's tone of voice--or perceived tone of voice--somehow validates or invalidates the ideas behind whatever words are being spoken.  Liberals are potentially likely to denounce claims (and more importantly, ideas themselves as opposed to just the words that communicate them) from men or whites, just as conservatives might dismiss ideas from women or non-whites.  It takes great intellectual intentionality and philosophical intelligence for such a person to shed this asinine reaction style, and these qualities are precisely what very few people have.

This is the kind of discrimination irrelevant to the truth of ideas that almost everyone objects to when they are on the receiving end, yet almost every non-rationalist very overtly engages in the same thing they would selectively oppose.  The world will never leave fallacies of personal or cultural appeal behind while failing to separate ideas from people who truthfully or deceptively, sincerely or insincerely, or rationally or emotionalistically hold to them.  In turn, since all sin and errors are ultimately rooted in a denial or neglect of rationality, there will never be a time when the world will be without its legions of avoidable problems until people at large stop focusing on people over ideas.

People are not rationalistic until they can reason out miscellaneous facts or ideas on their own or simply look to ideas instead of fixating on the identity of the people mentioning those ideas.  Communication is about conveying concepts and experiences--it is not about letting petty personal prejudices or other red herrings get in the way of having conversations.  There is no such thing as a rational person who thinks the identity of a someone has anything at all to do with the veracity of a claim he or she makes.  No matter who delivers a message, the conveyed ideas (or ideas intended to be conveyed) are what matters.  Their age, gender, race, social standing, and interpersonal history are secondary or of no relevance at all.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

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