Dilemma

twodoors.jpgBy now every­one on the inter­net has read Ron Suskind’s With­out a Doubt which was pub­lished in the New York Times. The whole arti­cle sort of hinges on one quote and you prob­a­bly know which one it is.

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the real­i­ty-based com­mu­ni­ty,” which he defined as peo­ple who “believe that solu­tions emerge from your judi­cious study of dis­cernible real­i­ty.” I nod­ded and mur­mured some­thing about enlight­en­ment prin­ci­ples and empiri­cism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world real­ly works any­more,” he con­tin­ued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we cre­ate our own real­i­ty. And while you’re study­ing that real­i­ty-judi­cious­ly, as you will-we’ll act again, cre­at­ing oth­er new real­i­ties, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re his­to­ry’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

This trou­bles me. Not the specifics, but the gen­er­al intent. To assume that one has the MMO nec­es­sary to ‘cre­ate a new real­i­ty’ is quite arro­gant. What fright­ens me even more about this bas­tardiza­tion of faith is that it dis­re­gards all effects of its actions, effects on the cur­rent real­i­ty mean noth­ing because the new real­i­ty is all that mat­ters; but this isn’t a new real­i­ty, it is just one that does­n’t feel cul­pa­ble. This seems to be the ulti­mate type of spin. I can’t even real­ly talk intel­li­gent­ly about this because it sticks in my craw so much. Now, I’m not say­ing I agree with Suskind, just that the con­cept I men­tion real­ly freaks me out.

Anoth­er dilem­ma: When try­ing to reach a com­pro­mise with some­one who does­n’t want to com­pro­mise, they take your argu­ment, throw it back at you and want to hold you to your own stan­dards while not agree­ing to do it them­self.

Exam­ple:

1: Please be qui­et.

2: I don’t want to be qui­et. Why don’t you stop com­plain­ing?

1: I will stop com­plain­ing if you’d just be qui­et.

2: You first.

1: If I stop com­plain­ing will you be qui­et?

2: You first.

How do you deal with this sit­u­a­tion?

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