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How to get people working for a common goal when they don’t agree on the goal? Practice Based Reasoning & Dialogue

 

You are angry with the liberals who are turning the world upside down with their radical ideas and abandoning common sense and basic values? Or you are angry with the conservatives who don’t see the graveness of the threat to our planet and the blaring injustices that are hurting us all? Well good for you! It’s charming that people have passionate ideas. Politicians, T-shirt merchants and Internet demagogues thank you for their business. Meanwhile the world goes on, roads get constructed, asparagus harvested and children put through school. How is this possible when we the world is full of those obnoxious liberals or conservatives who doesn’t seem to have any grasp on reality?

The truth is that when we do real stuff. Stuff that matters. There’s only one right way to do it, a practice, and knowledgeable people using their common sense will approximate that practice. Reasoning around this practice that stays connected to the practice, or practice-oriented challenge, will arrive at conclusion that all or the majority of the participants connected to the practice will agree on.

” Connected to the practice”? Surely the monks in the monastery are a not writing under the conclusion between the Vikings that the monks should be murdered when the monastery is robbed? Even though the monks clearly are connected to the practice of robbing the monastery. This is why you have to add Dialogue to practice based reasoning. Dialogue ensures that all parties to a practice can use their voice and are heard in deciding about measures. It ensures that no person is treated as an object that can be used only as a resource to further a goal. It should also ensure that all parties can express anything they have on their mind related to the issue without having to fear repercussions.

Practice is often not a good thing in itself. Ongoing practices can lead to abuse, systemic injustices and silencing of the truth that can lead to horrific consequences. Supplementing dialogic principles to practice based reasoning and giving practice-based reasoning about everyday challenges more room and weight in decision making can help communities and organizations come closer together and be more effective.

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