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CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: May 20, 2001
Latest update: May 20, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

1. Our misunderstanding of the value of human relationships. In the Peacemaking Primer, Hal Pepinsky tells us just three-fourths of the way down that first paragraph that:

   "I have asked my students: "Suppose we succeeded in eliminating crime. Now what do you want from those around you?" The modal response is: "I want to be left alone." This speaks to a vast area of human ignorance. We have virtually no experience of putting words to celebration of getting things we value from one another, notably of celebrating how others make us feel safer and more secure."

   How would Hal Pepinsky transform our discourse?

   jeanne's notes on one plausible response:

   One way I think he'd like to transform dominant discourse is by bringing to awareness the interdependence we each share with others. Hal recognizes that we need each other to provide the cooperative activities that make it possible for us to live and love together. We don't build roads, buildings, markets, or even homes alone. We depend on each other for encouragement, for energy, and for putting things together in ways that will actually work for us. We need each other's efforts, intelligence, and commitment in most of what we do. Being "left alone" is not such a good thing most of the time.

   I think Hal would want us to learn that we are each other's best resources, and that more can be accomplished through working with each other than can ever be accomplished by punishing those who fail at that cooperative work. I think Hal would want us to be aware that this applies not only to work and production, but also to art, to leisure, to identity. Look at School and Community Art for a reminder of how shared activities "add meaning to our lives."

2. What is the importance of understanding our need to "know," and how does it affect our interpersonal relationships?

   jeanne's notes on one plausible response:

   Jonathan Lear discusses the problems with "knowingness," that quality which makes us want to know the "right" answer. We want certaintly, and tend to dislike ambiguity. Lear, who re-interprets Freud in his book, Open Minded, uses some of Freud's data to illustrate that many of our behaviors are the result of pure emotion which is not rationally thought out.

   Lear demonstrates and supports that much of the behavior we observe is not in fact rational. As a matter of fact, we are often so sure that we must be rational, that we work backwards from the behavior to try to explain how we could rationally have decided on whatever action we took. We are determined that we must "make sense." But much of what we do doesn't really make sense. It's just what we do. Sometimes we think it through; sometimes we don't. Overdetermination in the interest of "being rational" simply leads us to be more defensive, more certain that we "know" that we did the "right" thing.