Dear Colleagues Across the Curriculum
(courses without borders series, cont.)

Triad:

Dialogue
Debate Dialectic


Call “debate” the Work Program part of academics:
argue to win with facts & stats, data & assessment.
The fundamental agony. We Work Constantly.

Then, call Dialogue the Service Project part of
academics: come let us reason together so as to
get something done! Politically correct: United
we stand, etc. & try & keep attention efficient
& focused on the project & the common goal.

That leaves Dialectic as the ACADEMICS
of academics, being purely academic—walking
thru groves, so to speak: let no chilblain be left
behind: bring IT on—devil & deep blue see, rock
& hard pace welcome to the Inn: we’re having a
confabulation here crying out loud, B.B.Wolf & 3
Little Piggies: argument for Argument’sSake so as
to see what we can see. Edification.

Here’s how DIALECTIC works:

I say blah blah & blah; you say: you’re full of crap.

Now: turn up both the blah blah blah (let that re-
present whatever it is I’m trying to say, come to
terms with, express) AND the “you’re-full-of-crap”
or however you want to model opposition.

(It’s the triadic structure that counts here,
here in “school mode—the differentiation,
not the topics. The more trivial the topic:
the more accessible the structures & patterns
that connect; the more profound the content—
the more likely we are to stick ourselves inside
our own profundity, know what I’m saying?
We’re all essentially fundamentalist.)

Key to DIALECTICAL PRACTICE is the capability
among the “players” to build up both the THESIS
and its Anti-THESIS. Like “loving the enemy” & crying
out loud: BRING IT ON! both sides say: We LOVE this
opposition because we know if we keep it IN PLAY (and
not let one or the other win) POP goes the weasel: a SYN-
THESIS that doesn’t diminish either the blah-blah-blah OR
the you’re-full-of-crap, Sam.

How to you like THEM apples!

Uncanny. Dialectic is an cerebral/affective martial art.
Anyone gets better and good at it by practice.

2 other ways of representing what I’m trying to represent:
:
1) to be able to entertain willful suspension of disbelief
(and belief), as Samuel Taylor Coleridge described it.

2) to be able to hold in mind 2 radically opposed truths—
as F. Scott Fitzgerald describes it.

IT = “genius.” (collaborative: academic)

Given PAIN & SUFFERING, say

On the one hand: letem take prozac if it helps…
On the other hand: jeesus: all these pills and
over-diagnosing is a ruination, damnit.

Ok: now put those 2 sets of VALUES in play and don’t let
either one win. See what kind of small Apocalypse
(un-covering, exposing) will ensue.
Count on it.

Dialectic. The ACADEMICS of academics.
Not to be conflated, collapsed, or confused
with the Work Program and Service Project
of academics. All in the family— but not the
same. Need we argue?



Of course. Or what’s a college for?

xxxooo, Sam