I mistrust convictions deeply, but I know I have quite a few. There are various reasons to express them in words; one of them is to instrumentalise them; to use them to gain some kind of advantage (not necessarily for yourself; see rhetorical speeches in politics). But another is to question them. By putting your convictions into words, you add an element to it that is not "purely you". They become tractable as other. The same words could have been pieced together by someone else; with another meaning in mind.
When I voice a conviction, doubt is implied. That is why I often find it hard to focus; I take my arguments apart, as I type them. I've been known, in the midst of a discussion, to abandon my position midsentence, even calling it rubbish, while the listeners were struggling to make sense of it. Frustrating for both.
So, ultimately, I suspect that the things I am convinced off are the ones I can't express yet. I do sometimes like a phrase, and repeat it, but my identification with it wanes with repition. It's automatic.
I've once wondered, whether I might distrust convictions because repetition bores me, eventually.
Then, there are those moments when you see your mind-set, as in a mirror. It happened in this thread. When Gary wrote this:
The Sawi people of New Guinea (now called Irian Jaya), in the early 1960s, were cannibals. In Sawi legend, their heroes weren't those who took the greatest number of heads, but those who were the most deceitful in befriending their victims before taking their heads. Friendship before betrayal would not prick their conscience because treachery was an ideal. So when missionaries, Don and Carol Richardson told them the story of Christ's life, who do you think was the real hero to the Sawi people? Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Jesus!
My first reaction was a chuckle. I had this cartoon impression of a gloating Sawi, and a naive Christian. The entire thing appealed to me on an anecdote level, but I didn't really think about it in depth. Reminded me of an aphorism, "Whenever cannibals are hungry, God sends them a nice, plump missionary." (Not verbatim, can't remember it; I think it's Oscar Wilde.) The appeal - to me - was that it showed up various mindframes. Different reference structures.
When Yobmod said the following, the entire thing changed, for me:
Oh its not relativism. The race of canibal murderers should be locked up until they die. I don't care if they don't think its wrong, it just is.
Strangely, I have less problems accepting "deceitful cannibals", than I have accepting this kind of attitude. I think it's the implied hostility and unwillingness to try and understand that upsets me.
But that's not the point, here. What struck me was that I realised I was caught in the same Judeo-Christian judgemental mindframe; thogh, with a different emotional slant. Remember how I said I had that image of a "gloating cannibal and a naive Christian"?
Turn your attention to the "gloating cannibal" part. I came to wonder, whether that isn't prejudice. All I have to go on is Gary's representation of - probably - some missionary's representation of the Sawi's legends. It didn't occur to me to question what the Missionary's might have missed.
Is the image of the "gloating cannibal" a projection? It didn't occur to me to ask questions. Such as: What did they make of Judas' suicide? Did they think Judas was Jesus enemy from the get go, or are things more complicated? What properties do the people have whose heads they take? Enemies? Victims? Cattle? Without lots of information, we tend to fill the holes in a story without ever realising we do so. (I saw the soon-to-be-headless as victims; even though most cannibal tribes tend to eat their enemies.) How do the Sawi behave to their friends? Are there taboos, things that are not to be used in the deceit? Do they reveal their prospective "victims" fate to them before they do it, or do they surprise them?
I'm convinced that - without answering questions such as these - any judgement on my part is incomplete.
And I think it's a fair assumption that there are
always questions I fail to ask.
This is why I prefer comparatively simple moral frameworks (pain-pleasure, action-consequence) to those that involve blanket statements and words such as "noble", "evil"...
The person making the decision has little doubt.
