From James, a netfriend.

Rowland

Thanks again, actually a few answers as well as questions.

I liked your link about encouraging ambiguity except that you finished with "Ideally, we are all moving towards 'simplicity the other side of complexity', but we must be patient with one another on the way there." which seemed inconsistent with the rest of what you were saying, I'd certainly hold to the opposite ideal.

How do we 'fix' all this? One way: Liberals and conservatives affirm one another (despite the tone of my original post). They're answering different questions, largely, and come with different modes of thinking often (a la Piaget etc.)

How do you figure the two affirm one another? It's sounds nice but i don't get it. If they're answering different questions then why do they always clash? Or do we only notice the differences. Re Piaget's modes of this is exactly the problem as i see it. From my memory his model had implicit in it a heirarchy placing the more mature abstract (can't remember his exact term) forms of thinking as superior to the others. But maybe some would argue this places an unfair elistist value judgement on the different modes.

Peace James

My response:

Good thinking James

Piaget's notions of concrete vs formal thinking are best understood as stages in the process of conceptualizing reality. Their complementarity is important...

How should liberals affirm conservatives and vice versa? Acknowledge they're both right about some things, and that they're at different points along a continuum (a la Fowler) - or, to use Sangster's analogy, at different points on the mountain-climb towards ultimate reality (God in Christ).

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.aaa.net.au (8000+ articles)