Group items tagged

"Rational deliberation is not a switch to be thrown on or off. It is a process, and therefore many of its effects would have to be measured over time. Tellingly, the participants in Haidt's original harmless taboo studies study had little time to deliberate. But as other studies have suggested when people are given more time to reflect, they can change their beliefs to fit the evidence, even when those beliefs might be initially emotionally uncomfortable to them. "To engage in democratic politics means seeing your fellow citizens as equal autonomous agents capable of making up their own minds. And that means that in a functioning democracy, we owe one another reasons for our political actions. "Giving up on the idea that reason matters is not only premature from a scientific point of view; it throws in the towel on an essential democratic hope. Politics needn't always be war by other means; democracies can, and should be places where the exchange of reasons is encouraged. This hope is not a delusion; it is an ideal - and in our countdown to November, one still worth striving for."

"I urged that we be realistic about reasoning and recognize that reasons persuade others on moral and political issues only under very special circumstances. "Reason is far less powerful than intuition, so if you're arguing (or deliberating) with a partner who lives on the other side of the political spectrum from you, and you approach issues such as abortion, gay marriage or income inequality with powerfully different intuitive reactions, you are unlikely to effect any persuasion no matter how good your arguments and no matter how much time you give your opponent to reflect upon your logic. "I never said that reasons were irrelevant. I said that they were no match for intuition, and that they were usually a servant of one's own intuitions. Therefore, if you want to persuade someone, talk to the elephant first."

The Bible advocates for the poor & oppressed

Political action, talking to moderates, needed - instead of just condemning the right.

W.B.Wilcox (Yale research fellow) on C.Smith's "Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want" - a book which denies evangelical views are monolithic, or a threat to political moderation & tolerance.

More than populism, the movement is about a transformation from political indifference to bracing for tyranny.

Brooks states Obama mistook 2008 landslide as American readiness for a new New Deal, rather than a referendum on GWBush. Americans are reacting against "government over-reaching." He sees 2 alternatives (among 4 available): Harsh&Arrogant (pass health reform by reconciliation) vs. Weak&Feckless (switch to incremental changes). Brooks favors the latter as less likely to bring a political rebellion that will "decimate policy-making for a generation." (He thinks the actual current "alternative" being pursued is "Incoherent & Internecine."

The Coffee Party was formed on the opening premise that the federal government "is not the enemy of the people."

H.J. Aaron (health economist) and R.D. Reischauer (former director of HBO): "Health care reform advocates will and should celebrate their history-making legislative success.... But supporters must not relax. They should prepare to meet the serious challenges that remain.... Far from having ended, the war to make health care reform an enduring success has just begun. Winning that war will require administrative determination and imagination and as much political resolve as was needed to pass the legislation."

Until very recently, technology had a clear, if boring, purpose: by taking care of the Little Things, it enabled us, its human masters, to focus on the Big Things. "Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible," proclaimed that noted connoisseur of contemplation Oscar Wilde. Fortunately, he added a charming clarification: "Human slavery is wrong, insecure and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends." ...Alas, most designers, following Wilde, think of technologies as nothing more than mechanical slaves that must maximize efficiency. But some are realizing that technologies don't have to be just trivial problem-solvers: they can also be subversive troublemakers, making us question our habits and received ideas. Recently, designers in Germany built devices - "transformational products," they call them - that engage users in "conversations without words." My favorite is a caterpillar-shaped extension cord. If any of the devices plugged into it are left in standby mode, the "caterpillar" starts twisting as if it were in pain. Does it do what normal extension cords do? Yes. But it also awakens users to the fact that the cord is simply the endpoint of a complex socio-technical system with its own politics and ethics. Before, designers have tried to conceal that system. In the future, designers will be obliged to make it visible. While devices-as-problem-solvers seek to avoid friction, devices-as-troublemakers seek to create an "aesthetic of friction" that engages users in new ways. Will such extra seconds of thought - nay, contemplation - slow down civilization? They well might. But who said that stopping to catch a breath on our way to the abyss is not a sensible strategy?

'I went on my first Christian radio show, a year ago, and the host set out to save me.... 'I have spent a lot of time thinking about the complexity of faith, and have tried to take theologically conservative faith seriously. As I did so, over a decade of research, I found myself more open to the idea of God, and more aware of the fragile human grasp on the real. '....It was a shock to have my host grill me about the state of my soul. It reminded me that one of the things that makes mutual respect between believers and nonbelievers difficult is that there is a kind of line in the sand, and you're either on one side of it or on the other. Skeptics do this too, of course.... 'Anthropologists have a term for this racheting-up of opposition: schismogenesis. Gregory Bateson developed the word to describe mirroring interactions, where every move by each side makes the other respond more negatively.... 'These days we Americans live not only with political schismogenesis, but also religious schismogenesis. 'Yet believers and nonbelievers are not so different from one another.... When I arrived at one church..., I thought that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I did not. Instead, I saw my own doubts, anxieties and yearnings reflected in those around me.... 'Many of my skeptical friends think of themselves as secular, sometimes profoundly so. Yet these secular friends often hover on the edge of faith. They meditate.... 'We need to recognize something of what we share, and to carry on a conversation - and if we can keep the conversation going, we will, however slowly, move forward. If we can't, we're in real trouble. '

'I went on my first Christian radio show, a year ago, and the host set out to save me.... 'I have spent a lot of time thinking about the complexity of faith, and have tried to take theologically conservative faith seriously. As I did so, over a decade of research, I found myself more open to the idea of God, and more aware of the fragile human grasp on the real. '....It was a shock to have my host grill me about the state of my soul. It reminded me that one of the things that makes mutual respect between believers and nonbelievers difficult is that there is a kind of line in the sand, and you're either on one side of it or on the other. Skeptics do this too, of course.... 'Anthropologists have a term for this racheting-up of opposition: schismogenesis. Gregory Bateson developed the word to describe mirroring interactions, where every move by each side makes the other respond more negatively.... 'These days we Americans live not only with political schismogenesis, but also religious schismogenesis. 'Yet believers and nonbelievers are not so different from one another.... When I arrived at one church..., I thought that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I did not. Instead, I saw my own doubts, anxieties and yearnings reflected in those around me.... 'Many of my skeptical friends think of themselves as secular, sometimes profoundly so. Yet these secular friends often hover on the edge of faith. They meditate.... 'We need to recognize something of what we share, and to carry on a conversation - and if we can keep the conversation going, we will, however slowly, move forward. If we can't, we're in real trouble. '

>JimWallis: 'We urgently need a new social covenant between citizens, businesses, and government. Contracts have been broken, but a covenant adds a moral dimension to the solution that is now essential. By definition, this will require the engagement and collaboration of all the "stakeholders" - governments, businesses, civil society groups, people of faith, and especially young people. >Social covenants should all include shared principles and features - a value basis for new agreements, an emphasis on jobs that offer fair rewards for hard work and real contributions to society, security for financial assets and savings, a serious commitment to reduce inequality between the top and the bottom of society, stewardship of the environment, an awareness of future generations' needs, a stable and accountable financial sector, and the strengthening of both opportunity and social mobility. >Such a covenant promotes human flourishing, happiness, and well-being as social goals, and it elevates the movement from a shareholder model to a stakeholder model of corporate governance. Such new social covenants are already being discussed in a variety of settings and countries. The discussion itself will help produce the conversation leading to the results that we need. >A moral conversation about a social covenant could ask what a "moral economy" should look like and for whom it should exist. How can we do things differently, more responsibly, more equitably, and yes, more democratically? >Lack of trust is bad for politics, bad for business, and bad for overall public morale. It undermines people's sense of participation in society as well as their feelings of social responsibility, and makes them feel isolated and alone-more worried about survival than interested in solidarity. Because the "contract" was broken, a sense of "covenant" is now needed, fused with a sense of moral values and commitments. And the process of formulating new social covenants could be an important pa

it is precisely because science is so powerful that we need the humanities now more than ever. In your science, mathematics and engineering classes, you're given facts, answers, knowledge, truth. Your professors say, "This is how things are." They give you certainty. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt and skepticism. The humanities are subversive. They undermine the claims of all authorities, whether political, religious or scientific. This skepticism is especially important when it comes to claims about humanity, about what we are, where we came from, and even what we can be and should be. Science has replaced religion as our main source of answers to these questions. Science has told us a lot about ourselves, and we're learning more every day. But the humanities remind us that we have an enormous capacity for deluding ourselves. They also tell us that every single human is unique, different than every other human, and each of us keeps changing in unpredictable ways. The societies we live in also keep changing-in part because of science and technology! So in certain important ways, humans resist the kind of explanations that science gives us.