Intellectual Interaction

Greetings,

My name is Wan Rezal, I'm one of Haziq's friends and will be serving as one of the writers on this blog. While the purpose of this blog may be to serve as a medium of sharing information relevant to debating as well as news regarding current issues, I understand it is also a window of providing food for thought. Hence, that is what I aim my first post to be, a small, hopefully insightful op-ed if you will. Beforehand, I would like to acknowledge the issue I am about to present does not apply to everyone, nor is everyone guilty of it. But, it is merely something I have empirically noticed.

Consider the following scenario:

It's the end of April, 2010. You're enjoying a chat with your friend over lunch. Your friend firmly believes there is a global environmental crisis plaguing the world, and you do not. Your friend brings up the matter of the BP Oil Disaster which recently just happened[1]. Along the lines of the conversation, it eventually escalates into a general discussion regarding the state of the environment. Eventually, you find yourself in no-man's land arguing your stance against your friend's. To make matters worse, rather than becoming an joint-inquiry into whether there is a global environmental threat, it becomes the heated argument in which the sole purpose is an emphasis on who was right, and who won. There are strong instances of denial, and plenty of dismissals on both sides of the argument, even maybe one or two ad hominems . It is ugly, it is messy, and in essence, no one wins in the end. The same arguments still lay on the table with no further progress by the end of the day; nothing came out of it. 

I am sure on more than one occasion this has happened to a vast majority of people. Some of these instances perhaps more extreme than others. As a consequence, an avoidance of intellectual interaction may have been promoted because of instances like the one above becoming the pre-dominant image of an in-depth discussion. But, it does not have to be this way. While a result of the spirit of competition promotes innovation, it does not necessarily apply to all deep, articulated discourse. What I aim to present is perhaps another method of approach.

A thought put forward by a German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, describes the triad of thesis, antithesis, and a synthesis[2]. How this concept works is basically:

• The thesis is an intellectual proposition
• The antithesis is the reaction towards the proposition, a negation of the thesis
• The synthesis solves the conflict between the two, reconciling their common truths. Hence, a new proposition is formed

This is a good start in laying the foundations of how new ideas can be made solid; a product goes through trial tests after all. It is evident that this concept bears potential to be the result of the spirit of competition. But, the point remains that there are other way to approach this.

What I would like to put forward is, rather than making it a competition, why not make it a joint-journey? It is a brainstorm session but with the ideas explored further. There are worlds of constructions, concepts, ideas that can be piqued ranging from something simplistic like the philosophy of friendship to, as complex as physics on an abstract-level of physics, to perhaps a taboo field of inquiry such as religion, all easily done under the mindset of looking at what can be, rather than what is. For, is it not true after all, to grasp at something new, one needs to empty what is in one's hand in the first place?

This philosophy behind this flexibility can come from all sorts of background. Bruce Lee, for instance, reiterates this when he says:

"Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend" (Bruce Lee, 2000).

This is just all I can say for this, for now. But, it is an idea to ponder upon nevertheless.

..............

[1]Avery H. (2010). The Ongoing Administration-Wide Response to the Deepwater BP Oil Spill [online]. Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/05/ongoing-administration-wide-response-deepwater-bp-oil-spill [Accessed 28 June 2012].

[2]Kaufman, W. (1966). Hegel: A Reintepretation. Anchor Books: US.

[3]Bruce Lee. (2000). Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey.