HOW TO SPEAK TO PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS 😉 FRIEND: “I just wanted to tell you that I

HOW TO SPEAK TO PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS 😉

FRIEND: “I just wanted to tell you that I will turn it down if yesterday’s political discussion was a little too much…”

ME: OK. So, you are important to me. That should be pretty obvious. So, I really, really, enjoy appreciate and value everything about you. Including your passion in politics. And I appreciate your position. I perceive it as insight, moral ambition, and honesty.

1) It’s not “too much” as long as you don’t think I”m the enemy or direct that anger at me. First it would be unjust. Second it would hurt my feelings quite a bit. Third it would impose on our ability to be honest a with one another. And that would be a loss – at least for me. 😉

2) I have very little insight into how people think of me other than what they tell me, or I can observe. And I work hard to speak to people on their level, with respect, kindness, and an effort to provide them with some benefit. But honestly, it is a chasm to cross. I am not ‘a normie’. One of the reasons I enjoy you is your combination of intelligence and what I see as humility born of conflict avoidance and harmony. You’re a moral person. It’s wonderful. …
Now, part of why I’m not an normie is that I deeply understand human instinct, intuition, and cognition at the genetic, biological, and operational levels *when it’s reduced to speech*, even if I have trouble at times empathizing with them for the simple reason that I don’t share their frames of reference – or more specifically – it’s hard for me to understand their fears and insecurities unless verbalized, because I simply don’t have them when it comes to ‘simple stuff’ so to speak. (Again, genetics: male systematizing over time vs female empathizing in time.).
So when you speak of political differences these are feelings and intuitions, but when I speak of them, I do so from a position of nearly exclusive understanding in the field.
As such people don’t have beliefs so much as instincts that are expressions of their genetics and resulting strategy and they selectively seek information to support those instincts and intuitions, and resulting experiences and accumulated knowledge. From my perspective it is very difficult to *Not Be A Bot*.
The best we can do is try to understand all sides and determine what is best along the timeline of consequences without overly personalizing it all.

3) So what I detect in you is moral panic for a whole host of reasons. This is not any attempt to invalidate your instincts, intuitions, feelings, concerns, preferences, beliefs whatsoever. Just the opposite. I understand and agree with them. I simply look for means to make everyone happier than not, even if no one is happy entirely. In other words as a libertarian I always look for a ‘trade’ that would give everyone some kind of win but no one a total loss. This is, after all, as far as I can understand, the only solution in a high trust moral polity capable of democratic participation in a republic under rule of law. Nothing else can or will work without resulting in totalitarianism.

I love humanity. Partly because I have come to understand that the sexual division of labor converted to a sexual division of cognitive labor converted to a distribution of male and female instinct, intuition, cognition and behavior, between the sexes – meaning the stereotypes are pretty much true but not always true – there are cognitively feminine men and cognitively masculine women even if the stereotype holes. Stereotypes after all, like Iq are the most accurate measurements in theh social sciences.

A byproduct of my scientific work is ‘mindfulness’ (mental and emotional self regulation) that is usually obtained through religion or ritual or philosophy. Because it’s hard to be angry with people who think differently when you realize that it’s necessary for coexistence and continuous evolution in the face of uncertainty and change.

Our problem is producing a population capable of making compromises via that understanding within a democratic polity under a republic under rule of law. It is the optimum way of discovering trades that are in everyone’s benefit even if no one is ever fully satisfied. 😉

Love ya.
-me.