By belief you gain insight:
When you walk into a world (another person's culture; a working
environment, a life)
with the thought, “There is something here
that is reasonable, is valuable, and is important,”
then that is what you will find.
Because every world sustains itself on something
touching true, that is valued, and that is useful.
Believing that
is the only way to open your heart, mind, and senses to
(A) perceive those distant objects and
(B) understand them in a way you can relate to your own objects.
So begin by believing.
Have you encountered a situation that made you pull back, where you
thought,
“This is completely unreasonable, crazy, incoherent,”
“This is just wrong, stupid, pointless,”
or “This is so useless, boring, a waste of time and
effort”?
We all have – because it takes so much energy and will to
understand.
And the more new, or different, or subtle this object,
the more we have to give of ourselves in order to understand:
to let go, for a moment, from our own reasons and theories,
values and institutions,
polished methods and coping habits.
To let go and feel some other world,
to see a view out of someone else's eyes,
to explore another way toward getting something done.
{Examples:}
Perhaps it's strange to imagine the rationality
of witch-doctors and fortune-tellers and late-night infomercials,
but then you think about the placebo-effect in healing
or the therapeutic relief of a little reassuring hope
or the monetary savings if you did dry your own meat and vegetables.
Maybe it's hard to see the moral purpose
in bloody cage fights or polyamorous relationships,
but then you explore the history of pugilism and martial arts
as outlets for youthful aggression, arenas for turning that energy
into self-control;
or you think about your own struggle to find one wholly fulfilling
partner,
how maybe if you found the right combination of people...
Perhaps it's unintuitive for you to comprehend the use of
meditation or crossword puzzles or comic books,
until you see how swimming gives you a similar feeling
of mental clarity and calm,
or how arguing playfully with your friends
is its own kind of memory-sharpening puzzle,
or how watching farcical movies
provides you the same escapist relief and simple life lessons
that a comic book might, if you'd ever gotten into one.
By belief you gain insight.
*
But how do you explain this to others?
Once you start understanding
some new situation,
or another person's views,
or alternate paths for achieving a goal,
you may want to share these insights with others in your group—
others who, as we all do, sometimes resist or deny
something that seems strange to our standard intuition.
So when you go back to your own perspective,
preparing to explain witch-doctors or cage fights or comic books,
remember your initial doubts
and the reasons, values, importance behind
them:
{Examples:}
Sometimes
a sick person needs surgery
or careful diagnosis
and preventative measures,
and in that case
thoughtful prayers and hope-filled potions
will be less than
enough to heal;
Sometimes
fighters are ungentlemanly and rude,
uncontrolled and
selfish and just violent,
and when pugilism
lets go of its art and philosophy thus,
it likewise
undermines its potential benefits for youth and society;
Sometimes
writers rely on stereotypes and spectacle
as shortcuts to
social commentary and human insight,
or their fans become
so deeply involved in the stories
that they pull away
from developing themselves in their own lives,
attitudes and
actions.
These doubts,
questions and concerns,
bring out a fuller
view
by brighting the
shadows that believers sometimes overlook.
And by giving voice
to these doubts,
you invite more
distant doubters to look at those strange worlds more closely—
despite their
possible feelings of resistance or discomfort—
because you have
just placed into that world
something that is
familiar to them:
by doubt, you
gain credibility.
{A
Quote, mapped in space:}
“As teachers and
students
we are in a good
position
to
learn
the ability
to see things
differently
from how we usually
see them,
and the
willingness
to risk doing it.
If we want to learn
those
skills,
it helps to notice
the inner
stances—
the cognitive and
psychological dispositions—
we need for
doubting and believing:
• If we want to
doubt
or find flaws in
ideas
that
we are tempted to accept
or
believe
(perhaps they are
ideas that “everyone knows are true”),
we need to work
at
extricating
or distancing ourselves
from
those ideas.
There’s a
kind of language
that helps here:
clear, impersonal
sentences
that
lay bare the logic or lack of logic
in them.
• If, on the other
hand, we want to
believe
ideas that
we are tempted to reject
(“Anyone can see
that’s a crazy idea”)—
if we are trying to
enter in or experience
or dwell in those
ideas—
we benefit from the
language of
imagination,
narrative, and
the personal
experience.
”
– Peter Elbow
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V
Stances
→ … …
… … ← Skills
→ … …
… … ←
→
←
Learning
(2
languages that support this:
reason,
experience)
*
