We rarely understand what people mean until we ask them. Moreover, they may not know themselves what they mean until they’re asked. This is why, on subjects of any depth and complexity, the dialogue, rather than the sermon, is the model for intellectual engagement. The sermon may preach humility, but only the dialogue puts it into practice. For only the dialogue embodies what Emerson called “the secret of the true scholar,” which is that “[e]very man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.” What the true scholar learns is not just “some point” on which he had been ignorant. He learns from that particular instruction the larger lesson of his own ongoing dependency on others, [and] the limits of his own experience.*I believe the previous post was an attempt to say just this and about that subject. I am a prisoner of my own experience, and without dialogue, a conversation attempting to go somewhere, why should I be the one to initiate by broadcasting. Some have seen through my sermons or lectures and taken up a point or two and commented, or they have asked for the background, what I meant, etc.
But because of my insignificant voice, I have brought myself up short and said, "Stop it. In form and content you are discouraging people from their rightful place in the world and in your life. Stop disrespecting others. Be quiet. Listen. Ask questions. And so I shall try, harder."
Thus my dialogues appear here and elsewhere.
Of course this blog is a performative contradiction . . . except no one reads this blog. It's just about sorting me out so that I can get straight on some things. Audience of one, no apologies.
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* From "The American Scholar: Low Definition In Higher Education - Lyell Asher". 2016. Theamericanscholar.Org. Accessed December 28 2016. https://theamericanscholar.org/low-definition-in-higher-education/#.WGNhSvkrLIV.
