Deep-Dialogue/critical-Thinking/ Competitive-Cooperation: The Most Authentic Human Way to Be and Act

I. All Is Interpreted Knowledge To begin, we humans as a group have in the last two centuries increasingly learned that nobody knows everything about anything! We now know that all knowledge is interpreted There is no truth out there. There is out there, but truth resides in our knowing capacities: senses, sensitivities, intellect. Normally, we use the words truth and to refer to our statements about something. We would say that my statement door is closed is true if we checked and found that the statement accurately described reality--in this case, that the door in fact is closed. At the same time, we can of course say many other thing about the door; for example, it is so tall, so wide, is a particular color, made of such material, and so on indefinitely. Our potential knowledge of that door is endless, except that it is limited by our receptors. If I know little or nothing, for example, about chemistry, my knowing about the chemical make-up of the door is thereby limited. If this is true about a simple physical object, how much more is it true about more complicated, abstract matters, such as are chimed in understandings of literature, political affairs, history, and, especially, that most comprehensive of all disciplines, religion/ideology (An explanation of the ultimate meaning of life, and how to live accordingly--if based on some notion/experience of the transcendent, however understood, then called religion, if not, then called, perhaps, ideology)? The all-encompassing meaning of claims in the Bible, Qur'an, Vedas, etc., will necessarily be limited by my knowing capacities. If I am a believing Muslim, for example, the Qur'an will be completely without effect in my life until it has gotten into my knowing capacities, my senses, sensitivities, and intellect. But, like liquid Jello being poured into its container, it--in this case, the meanings of the Qur'an--takes the shape of the container. The truth of the Qur'an will take the shape of my senses, sensitivities, and intellect. Analogously, this is the case with all religious believers (or for passes in a person's life as religion or ideology). So, if I am the kind of Catholic who Whatever the pope says is true, then I have decided that truth will take the shape of whatever the pope says, or analogously, if I as a Muslim say Whatever the sheikh says the Qur'an I accept, or, alternatively, I say that I will decide for what is the ultimate meaning of life. There is no escape from the fact that I am intimately involved in all knowledge, that All knowledge is interpreted knowledge. Am I then trapped in a destructive solipsism (Latin: solus, alone; ipsus, myself), a Leonard Swidler bubble? No, for we humans can communicate with other knowers, who also necessarily perceive the world from their own vantage points, as I do from mine. That gives us the possibility of learning about other facets of reality--seen from, for example, Mary Murphy's perspective, or from Mutombo Nkulu's perspective--so that I can compare, analyze their knowledge, and aim at gaining an ever fuller, but never complete and never totally objective grasp of reality. In a word, the only way we can endlessly escape our myself alone bubble is by dialogue. I need to come to know about reality as perceived and understood by, for example, a Chinese Buddhist woman, who clearly will perceive and understand facets of reality that I as an American Catholic man cannot perceive and understand from my experience of reality, and vice versa. In short, we both need to be in dialogue with each other, and everyone else--endlessly! This is a far deeper, life-transforming understanding of dialogue than the often now rather superficial common understanding. Hence, I increasingly use the expanded term Deep-Dialogue to get at this more profound, substantial, life-shaping meaning. …