BothAndBlog Forum

Some readers new to the BothAnd Blog may conclude that its call for tolerance regarding diversity of worldviews is nothing more than neo-liberal political correctness. From a conservative perspective, PC is the wimpy position of whining victims, demanding affirmative action to take stuff from successful people and give it to the losers *. However, that polarized Us-versus-Them stance would miss the central point of the Both-And attitude. Instead of merely flipping the script of a selfish & divisive approach to political issues, the BA principle is aimed at editing the script, with emphasis on altruism & unity. It would advise "good people" to work together with other "good people" from different backgrounds, with other principles & prejudices, toward a solution to social problems that serve the interests of all participants.

The point of BothAnd diplomacy is not for "our kind" to have-it-all, but for all-of-us collectively to cooperate for the common interest. This is supposed to be how democratic politics works, but in practice it too-often becomes "war by other means" **. The BothAnd Blog is a response to the recent polarization of Politics and Religion, calling for more of the scientific attitude of self-doubt. As Benjamin Franklin plead with the deadlocked Continental Congress, each of us should "doubt a little of their own infallibility". Neither Politics, nor Religion, nor Science has access to divine revelation or inerrant information. So moderation & modesty are essential for all inter-faith inter-personal activities.

Wisdom will teach us not to naively assume that the guy on the other side of the table is negotiating in good faith. However, the BA solution is not to immediately switch to bad-faith bargaining, but to continue to play by the rules of a non-zero-sum game. See Game Theory below.


* That Marxist doctrine opposes & reverses the Capitalist position, which is sometimes called the "Matthew principle" as presented by Jesus in the New Testament : Matthew 25:29: "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." So, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The reverse of rule by the top-two-percent is sometimes called "the tyranny of the majority", which may be why the two-percenters among the founding fathers did not want to establish the US as a direct democracy.

** "War is the continuation of politics by other means." Clausewitz

Game Theory : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

Here's another application of the BothAnd principle. Excerpts from a Quora post by Toni Kallisto :

<< Like many a young lad, I was grappling with God’s existence. On the one hand, there burned in me a desire to believe in God’s existence, faith if you will; on the other hand, I found that the convincing arguments against God’s existence pulled me toward atheism. . . .

Many perceive the lack of consensus or clear direction in philosophy as its weakness, a sign of its utter uselessness, but I learned to see something else: that humans, when they believe in something, can build beautiful intellectual structures, nigh-on unassailable bastions of logic – and other humans, believing in something else, can find the tiniest cracks in that citadel of reason and bring it crashing down. If you cannot find the beauty and ingenuity in the craziest philosophical theory, you are to blame. And if you cannot find the reason why the most plausible philosophical theory is wrong, you are to blame. . . .

Seeing from both of these points of view to me is the essence of philosophical insight, to step above the bickering and see more widely until the bickering loses its meaning. . . .

Like I now believe quite firmly that atheists are right in that God’s existence cannot be proven, but wrong in thinking that it should be proven; I also believe that theists are justified in their faith in God, but wrong in thinking that the faith should be proven. . . . >>

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-most ... srid=umKAX

Note : the existence of a supernatural deity cannot be proven, either by pure Reason, or by empirical research. But some of the essential characteristics of the cosmos as a whole can be discovered by a combination of both approaches. You can call that character "God" or "Nature", but either way you are bound to abide by its laws. Those laws apply to you, regardless of your faith & piety. Only the laws of humans can be evaded by nonsense or pretense. Neo-Deism requires us to learn to harmonize both Faith & Doubt, both Feelings & Reasons, both Religion & Science.