Monday, October 6, 2008

Dueling Logics

I have been toying around with an idea I call "dueling logics." I call it that because it seems there are several ideas and notions that are at odds with each other, that different groups put their weight behind and that everyone thinks are mutually exclusive to each other. I will give some background on how I came upon this idea. It all came about from the unanswerable question "can God make a rock he herself could not life?" My answer is yes, if we assume God is all powerful. then she does not have to follow the laws of logic. Well, after occasionally contemplating this for a couple years, I free-associated it to the notion that competing logics are either right or wrong and mutually exclusive to their competitors. For example, either violence does not work and so non-violence does, or vice versa. Or the logic of fear that pushes mistrust of others as security and the logic of hope that pushes generosity as security. Or authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism. And among these dueling logics, they all claim that the other logic is faulty and that their's is true.
Well, it occurred to me, maybe the laws of logic are breakable in one sense... maybe they both co-exist and both hold elements of truth in them despite the fact they claim to be fundamentally incompatable.

I will use the example of violence and non-violence cause I have alot of experience thinking about it. Violence purports to be able to scare people into consent and that non-violence will be unable to accomplish that consent. Non-violence purports to be able to create consent through understanding and generosity, and that violence simply rifts the bonds that allow provide security. Well, I do not see why both logics are mutually exclusive, I think they both hold some truth and some untruth (I do favor non-violence, and think it is more practical and full of truth). There is truth in the fact that violence does get people's consent to stop doing or do something. It has lots of bad repercussions, but for the single-minded pursuit of an objective, I can see where many people would fall into it's trap. Non-violence needs to recognize this truth if it is to further develop a strategy to remove the use of violence from conflicts. Similarly, violence needs to recognize that there is a large amount of "collateral damage" when violence is used, not just in unintended material damage and death but in the emotional scarring of people as well as entire societies. Using non-violence would prevent these negative repercussions.

So, that is something I have been trying to do, find the truth that underlies all sides of "dueling logics" even if I disagree with those sides. The fact that a large number of people put faith in some ideas means that they cannot be entirely devoid of truth. Logics, no matter how much they claim to be mutually exclusive, are not and we should not believe they are.

It is also interesting that modern religions claim to be mutually exclusive to each other. If you believe in one, you don't believe in the others. This was not always the case. Back during the Roman empire, the Pantheon of Gods accepted outsiders among their ranks, so in a Roman city you might see an Egyptian God prayed to by the same people who pray to a Greek God. People did not see this as odd or contradictory because mutual exclusivity was not an intergral part of religions back then. People could piece together their own religion from the different strands avaliable.
Interestingly enough, I can't remember too many religious wars back then either.

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