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Re: [xmca] critique of pure tolerance



Larry,

I wish we could sell tolerance as something that would bring prosperity. Would be a great argument in the US right now. Unfortunately, I don't believe it. I think it works the other way around. :-(

Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke 

Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093






On Jan 3, 2010, at 10:13 PM, Larry Purss wrote:

> Jay and Yuan
> Is it prosperity that leads to tolerance or tolerance that leads to prosperity?
> I think that we could look to places like Venice or Florence or Moorish Granada   Were they places of tolerance that allowed multi-culturalism and the interpenetration of ideas to flourish (and create wealth) or were they wealthy and therefore became tolerant?  
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: yuan lai <laiyuantaiwan@gmail.com>
> Date: Sunday, January 3, 2010 8:43 pm
> Subject: Re: [xmca] critique of pure tolerance
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> 
>> I don't know what genuinely pluralist conditions and elements 
>> are, Jay. I
>> would think one thing is a willingness to acknowledge that we 
>> have a problem
>> to deal with. Some Canadians, who are proud of its history of 
>> embracingmulticulturalism, say to me, when I mention racism, 
>> that we don't the
>> problem of overt racism in the US. To me, a petty crime or white 
>> collarcrime still is a problem to acknowledge as a first step.
>> 
>> I think of Zhuangzi as a Chinese exemplar of critical thinking 
>> (he was said
>> to flourish 350-300 BC). 
>> *http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhuangzi/*  That
>> is, if you believe that the encyclopedia is generally 
>> trustworthy, that the
>> translation is good enough to allow evaluation of Zhuangzi's 
>> words, and so
>> on.
>> 
>> How do we speak to politicans so they understand the seriousness 
>> of the
>> matter at hand, testing babies? In general I favor the idea of 
>> silliness.American politicians enjoy or at least get football, 
>> right? Did skilled
>> football players, when they were 2, 5, or 15 years old, practice 
>> isolated,decontextualized skills, catching a ball in midair and 
>> staying there or, as
>> a ball is thrown, players running away from each other to show 
>> who is
>> fastest? (I know, I am being silly) Even professional football 
>> players work
>> on developing critical thinking; a neighbor, a CFL player, told 
>> me that his
>> team spent more time indoors, watching videotaped games, than 
>> out in the
>> field. But politicians understanding is one thing, acting on that
>> understanding is another.
>> 
>> Yuan
>> 
>> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Jay Lemke 
>> <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> Nancy and all,
>>> 
>>> Dialogue is both the most natural form of communication and 
>> also an
>>> improvable art. It does easily degenerate into binary, partisan
>>> polarization, and I think we know that historically this tends 
>> to lead to
>>> violence and to long-lasting, even multi-generational 
>> conflicts. It is also
>>> a favorite tool of politicians, especially those who wish to 
>> move from being
>>> the representatives of a small minority to building their one-
>> issue, or
>>> one-enemy coalitions of the uncritical.
>>> 
>>> But it can, on the other hand, become the art of reciprocal 
>> perspectives> and dialectic advance of ways of seeing the world 
>> and acting in it, if we
>>> can find ways to re-enunciate the words of Others, to re-
>> adjust the scope of
>>> common ground, to do what majority politicians usually aim 
>> for, "bringing us
>>> all together". Of course that is a somewhat unrealistic ideal, 
>> and it too
>>> degenerates into pushing majority views onto everybody, so 
>> learning nothing.
>>> 
>>> Pluralist societies seem to require a certain kind of general 
>> cultural> ethos, and I am not sure that the US really has it. 
>> Interestingly, a
>>> frequently cited example of a genuinely successful pluralist 
>> culture/society> is Hawai'i, Obama's home. I don't know what 
>> specifically the elements of a
>>> genuinely pluralist culture are. What cultural values or 
>> habits predispose
>>> people to tolerance? to curiosity about the viewpoints of 
>> Others? to a
>>> desire to learn across differences? to a disinclination 
>> towards simplistic
>>> analyses and polarizations?
>>> 
>>> Most historical societies seem to contain both tendencies, towards
>>> pluralism and toward monologism. Times of prosperity seem to favor
>>> tolerance, times of scarcity feed intolerance.
>>> 
>>> What else do we know about the conditions for productive pluralism?
>>> 
>>> JAY.
>>> 
>>> Jay Lemke
>>> Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
>>> Educational Studies
>>> University of Michigan
>>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
>>> 
>>> Visiting Scholar
>>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
>>> University of California -- San Diego
>>> La Jolla, CA
>>> USA 92093
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Dec 29, 2009, at 5:39 AM, Nancy Mack wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Jay,
>>>> I like your emphasis on the Bakhtinian cross-difference discourse.
>>>> I am alarmed by the over emphasis on argument in first year 
>> composition> courses and the new language arts core standards.
>>>> The emphasis on argument:
>>>> Eliminates narratives of individuals.
>>>> Promotes binary thinking.
>>>> Asks us not to reflect on our life experiences.
>>>> Sets us up to be one issue voters.
>>>> Makes the world a safe, uncomplex world of simple decisions.
>>>> Creates enemies from difference.
>>>> Makes peace into oppression.
>>>> Prefers logic rather than ethics.
>>>> Polarizes emotion as the opposite to logic.
>>>> Prefers discourse that badgers rather than communicates.
>>>> Disrespects different world views and philosophies.
>>>> Divides us into winners and losers.
>>>> Privileges dogma over openness.
>>>> And so on.
>>>> 
>>>> Nancy
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>
>>>> Date: Monday, December 28, 2009 10:14 pm
>>>> Subject: [xmca] critique of pure tolerance
>>>> To: XMCA Forum <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On the ethics of engaging respectfully with positions you really
>>>>> strongly disagree with.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Recap: some of us are trying to figure out effective ways to
>>>>> challenge conservative/oppressive discourses about 
>> education and
>>>>> other matters in ways that are not as likely to be marginalized
>>>>> as many left rhetorical strategies have become in many places
>>>>> and for many audiences.
>>>>> 
>>>>> One strategy might be to see what the core values and discourses
>>>>> of those to whom our opponents appeal might say that is 
>> more to
>>>>> our way of thinking. For example, what Christian discourse may
>>>>> say that is in favor of critical thinking, or against the
>>>>> priority of decontextualized learning, or just against the
>>>>> "gospel of prosperity" (which, if you haven't seen recent news
>>>>> interest in this is an explicit movement in fundamentalist US
>>>>> christianity that says God wants you to get rich).
>>>>> 
>>>>> In doing so, however, we tread the slippery slope. Historically
>>>>> the Anglo-Saxon left has been rather purist, and its internal
>>>>> squabbles have mainly been over who is more perfectly
>>>>> marxist/democratic/etc. Leaving not much room to develop
>>>>> discourses that overlap or penetrate those of the non-left
>>>>> majority (who in the US are also mostly non-right). Something
>>>>> different happened in Latin America, where a fusion of Catholic
>>>>> populism and left communitarianism did a much better job of
>>>>> appealing to both rural populations and university intellectuals
>>>>> (Freire as a case in point, but he is part of a much larger
>>>>> discourse tradition). As I recall a few popes have actually
>>>>> condemned Latin American bishops for being too leftist. So they
>>>>> must have been getting something right. :-)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Nonetheless, the fear is that we might lend credibility to
>>>>> oppressive discourses by speaking partly within their discursive
>>>>> worlds. That is probably a justifiable concern, given Bakhtin's
>>>>> close linkage in the notion of heteroglossia (diversity of
>>>>> discursive worlds, or "social voices") of ways of 
>> describing the
>>>>> world and ways of valuing it. But to my mind communication is
>>>>> not about conversion, nor indeed even about being right. It is
>>>>> about establishing new cross-difference discourses that produce
>>>>> surprising ideas and values. I have always thought that there
>>>>> was rather too much missionary spirit in leftist discourse, that
>>>>> it remained uncomfortably close to christian messianic and
>>>>> evangelical models. The problem with this being that it assumes
>>>>> an end to history, that answers are known, and so there is no
>>>>> real incentive for a dialogue in which one is open to learn with
>>>>> one's interlocutors.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So, yes, there is risk, but there is also much to gain.
>>>>> 
>>>>> BTW, is there a good history of "critical thinking"? someone
>>>>> must believe it was invented in the Englightenment, or in the
>>>>> Renaissance, or by the 400 BC Greeks, by the Jews (when?), by
>>>>> the Chinese (when?). If we are going to claim that Jesus or
>>>>> Buddha exemplified critical thinking, are we also going to
>>>>> believe it's true?
>>>>> 
>>>>> JAY.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Jay Lemke
>>>>> Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
>>>>> Educational Studies
>>>>> University of Michigan
>>>>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>>>>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
>>>>> 
>>>>> Visiting Scholar
>>>>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
>>>>> University of California -- San Diego
>>>>> La Jolla, CA
>>>>> USA 92093
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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