So today I'm walking the tightrope between brilliantly simple and blatantly simple minded.
You see I'm all for purity of thought. But I am kinda opposed to the idea of nuance being something that should be avoided.
I've written before around the idea that while the French are taught in school to argue both sides of an argument and the British to make the case for one side over the other the Americans are taught that one of the four answers suggested is absolutely correct.
It's a very 'black or white' system that leads to election of people who are absolute in their beliefs ('you're either with us or against us' being a famous Bush version) and who see the world without shades of gray (Axis of Evil, Evildoers etc.) spring to mind. IT also leads to vilification of people who admit that the world is complicated, that their are shades of gray and that perhaps positions should change as circumstances change.
The idea of Antinomy really doesn't fly in American politics... even the word would have you branded an 'intellectual elitist'
And that's kind of what's killing me on a presentation today. I want to be single minded. I want to be straightforward and I want to know that what I'm saying is easily understood and executable... but not at the cost of nuance, depth and richness.
It's tough this 'writing your thoughts for the consumption of others' business, isn't it?
1 comment:
Quite right. I have an argument that I bring out at dull parties that much of this has its origins in the English adversarial legal system - which of course we exported to the colonies. Those countries like France with Inquisitorial systems think quite differently. But our legal system informed our law makers in Parliament, who had the building constructed and the whole constitution moulded to be 'establishment' v 'opposition', divided by two sword thrusts.
This of course is then compunded by the British invention of most of the most popular sports - which are 1 (or 1 team) v 1. It's no coincidence that sports that don't fit this model - e.g. long distance cycling - are popular in Inquisitorial countries like Spain and France, and but less so in simple Adversarial Britain.
Not every thing in black and white makes sense... ;p
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