Great post, Jason. Thank you for always inspiring (and encouraging) me to think more critically - especially over a recent lecture we were both in attendance for 😆
Jase- To quote a good friend "Brilliant!!" Also this seems to me to be one of several key insights you surface in this incisive piece "admitting error feels less like intellectual growth - and intellectual growth is no longer a desired pursuit - and more like the personal collapse of identity and being." After convening hundreds of 3 Practice Circles where I've observed people struggle to admit they're wrong (and have struggled with it myself) - it does seem that it is connected to a kind of desperation - something visceral - I scurry around seeking intellectual cover or excuses where I can hopefully divert my ideological opposites attention. It all feels so immensely personal. Which is why we need places to "practice" saying "I might be wrong" We need to hear those words come out of our own mouths and realize that we didn't die having made that admission. That experience gives us intellectual ground to stand on so the next time we are tempted to divert or deny we find a way to say out loud - I might be wrong
Thanks, Jim! Your observation from the Practice Circles is spot-on. That "visceral desperation" you describe - the scurrying for intellectual cover - it's exactly what I'm getting at. We've made our positions so synonymous with our selves that changing our minds feels like erasure of self.
And you're so right that we need spaces to practice this. The muscle memory of saying "I might be wrong" out loud and surviving it - that's not abstract philosophical work, it's deeply practical and ontologically life-giving. It creates experiential evidence that admitting error doesn't annihilate us. That we remain intact, maybe even more intact, on the other side of it all.
You're creating actual containers for people to do this kind of work - to literally hear themselves say those words and live through it. This strikes me as exactly the kind of infrastructure we need right now. Not more debate platforms or argumentation frameworks, but places where the vulnerability of uncertainty can be rehearsed and normalised. Keep up your needed work my friend!
Great post, Jason. Thank you for always inspiring (and encouraging) me to think more critically - especially over a recent lecture we were both in attendance for 😆
😎👊🏻🥸
Jase- To quote a good friend "Brilliant!!" Also this seems to me to be one of several key insights you surface in this incisive piece "admitting error feels less like intellectual growth - and intellectual growth is no longer a desired pursuit - and more like the personal collapse of identity and being." After convening hundreds of 3 Practice Circles where I've observed people struggle to admit they're wrong (and have struggled with it myself) - it does seem that it is connected to a kind of desperation - something visceral - I scurry around seeking intellectual cover or excuses where I can hopefully divert my ideological opposites attention. It all feels so immensely personal. Which is why we need places to "practice" saying "I might be wrong" We need to hear those words come out of our own mouths and realize that we didn't die having made that admission. That experience gives us intellectual ground to stand on so the next time we are tempted to divert or deny we find a way to say out loud - I might be wrong
Thanks, Jim! Your observation from the Practice Circles is spot-on. That "visceral desperation" you describe - the scurrying for intellectual cover - it's exactly what I'm getting at. We've made our positions so synonymous with our selves that changing our minds feels like erasure of self.
And you're so right that we need spaces to practice this. The muscle memory of saying "I might be wrong" out loud and surviving it - that's not abstract philosophical work, it's deeply practical and ontologically life-giving. It creates experiential evidence that admitting error doesn't annihilate us. That we remain intact, maybe even more intact, on the other side of it all.
You're creating actual containers for people to do this kind of work - to literally hear themselves say those words and live through it. This strikes me as exactly the kind of infrastructure we need right now. Not more debate platforms or argumentation frameworks, but places where the vulnerability of uncertainty can be rehearsed and normalised. Keep up your needed work my friend!
you say it so much more eloquently than I can :-)
haha