LSD-2 Letter-From-Editors

Letter from the Editors

Honest Humility for Earnest Conversations

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THERE ARE three kinds of views, we've been told: "my view, your view, and the valid one." That is just to remind any pair of debaters or mind gladiators that they can both be wrong. Of course, they can both be right, or at least partly right, with each one furiously refuting what the other one is not saying, and with both engaged more in a battle of egos than in a contest of ideas, especially if there is a crowding audience to impress.

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It is all right for debating clubs to behave this way in a formally-declared competi­tion, where each contestant openly eyes a trophy or medal not really for having the best ideas but more for logical thinking, mental alertness, full-bodied articulations and clever use of psychological dirty tricks. It's not all right when the pattern of the passionate mental boxing gets dragged into what is, or at least what starts out to be, an earnest human conversation.

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Minus that kind of compet­itive passion, everyone in con­versation can afford to remind oneself of the possibility of being utterly wrong. Minus the pressure to immediately prepare an answer that would ”score against the opponent's ongoing statements,” all are af­forded the chance to listen to one another's ongoing state­ments until these statements are completed and fully un­derstood.

Earnest human conversa­tions are held by people who come together to share know­ledge, opinions and feelings, with each one eager to learn from the others, with each one conscious that he or she could not possibly have beforehand all the truth there is to have on any topic, much less a mono­poly of truth. Each one would then be eager to have his or her own truth checked, valid­ated, enriched by other minds.

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.....Then there would be a sharing of the individual rays of light, from where "lightshare" and "sanib-sinag" pro­jects got their names.

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People who are most confi­dent that their thoughts are va­lid can well afford to speak their truth quietly. They know that such validity does not need to be en­hanced, or proved, by forcefulness in delivery.

They are also confident that the listener would sooner or later recognize as valid a very calmly-deliv­ered point when enough expe­riences shall have been had to appreciate its wisdom. It is the insecure who feel the pressure to sound so "sure" of their own points and even con­temptuous of contrary views.

One can begin, at least mentally, one’s own very confi­d­ent assertions with the words, “Right now I believe that…” or “My own evolving truth is that…” and remind all that what is being said is not really being claimed to be the un­changing absolute truth for all to bow down to. And whenever­

we agree with any opin­ion from another person, let’s just say so, that we agree, and refrain from saying he’s right, as if we had the right to unila­terally bestow such judgment on any view.

Right? No, you just agree.

The challenge is to recog­nize and present our own views as a contribution to the conversation, a submission to its dynamic process, and not at all as the proverbial last word to end it. The mind is said to be like an umbrella; it only works when it is open. If we are all thinking and talking with honest humility, that's the only time we can really be thinking and talking.As a mode of governance, democracy can only thrive and survive in the universal prac­tice of earnest conversations all around: am­ong stakehold­ers within each small com­munity, among stakeholders within clusters of commun­ities; between these stakehold­ers and the govern­ment they legitimize and sus­tain; among the government functionaries working within their respective scopes and focuses of governance; among all citizens.

Let no one who has any­thing to sincerely say –- any view, complaint, observ­ation, ques­tion or suggestion to arti­culate –- be silenced by self-censoring timidity or by inti­midation from the arrogance of others within the circle of human eq­uality. Only a clear consensus in an obvious em­ergency situa­tion may res­pectfully silence, for the time being, the voice of an insistent minority.

To these Ethics of Earnest Con­versations, the LightShare e-Mail List Group and the Lam­bat-Liwanag Network for Em­powering Paradigms are sub­scribed. And this can only be advocated strongly, and ad­hered to, by their joint publica­tion, LightShare Digest, and by the entire synergism com­munity that it seeks to serve well.

Yours in synergy,

The Editors,

LightShare Digest

Makati City, Philippines.

June 2005

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