Justifiably Paranoid

  “Are you sincere?” is a question that resonated deeply enough with the American public to have been the title and theme of a song recorded 14 times, and that reached number three on the Billboard chart. The song resonated, I believe, because it portrayed a fundamental. issue in all interpersonal experience. In my Questioning & Answering book, I coupled sincerity with reasonableness to address those essential features of human discourse. There I suggest that in all important discussions wherein we ask a question, are asked a question, provide an answer, or receive an answer, we should consciously consider its sincerity and reasonableness.   Among other considerations, sincerity and reasonableness must be contextualized for time, place, and person [That merely is one aspect of contextualizing for your internal context (body and mind) and your external context (everything outside your body and mind)]   Evaluate why the questions and answers are being presented now, w...

I accept your right to your conclusions. But I don’t necessarily accept the PROCESS by which you reach them.  That is the guiding belief that undergirds my discussions with other people. In this blog post I offer only a few of the many reasons for the PROCESS by which I came to my belief. First and foremost, if we each inform the other of our process, We can more objectively decide the specifics of what we do and do not agree with.  And that knowledge of process can enable us to adjust our opinions of the issue, and/or of each other.  That is, we can understand our extant messages and our extant dyadic relationship variables in ways that increase the chances for rational objective discussions and of mutually satisfying resolutions in the here and now. Second, we both do well to be aware of and sensitive to the personal identity factors that influence our capacity for rational discourse.  Some of the factors are relatively easy to infer. For instance, given the US...