Adversarialism and Mutuality

This recognition and recall practice is based on Chapter Four, pp. 23 - 36, of Gordon Fellman's Rambo and the Dalai Lama. Answer the following questions on the basis of Fellman's text.

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1. Fellman suggests that we have accepted a basic underlying assumption today that winning is the point of whatever we do.

jeanne's notes

1. True is the correct answer. See p. 23.

2. Fellman states unequivocally that:

1. Adversarialism is a stylized way of hating.

jeanne's notes

This answer is absolutely inaccurate. Fellman says that group solidarity results from banding together to exclude the "Other." That is nowhere near saying that adversarialism itself is a stylized way of hating. In fact, Fellman says: "I am not claiming that all adversarialism is bad and all mutuality is good. I am, rather, talking about relative emphases and their consequences." (At p. 25.)

b. A "paradigm shift" from adversarialism to mutuality would be difficult to accomplish because that isn't really the way the world works. People do not easily give up their old ideas, even when science produces evidence that tends to disprove them.

jeanne's notes

Answer "b" is accurate. Fellman says: "I believe paradigm shifts work in Kuhnian fashion in social science and also in ordinary public understanding of the world." But he also goes on to say that adversarialism is so much a part of all our models of understanding the world that neither the academy nor the ordinary public will readily accept ideas, like those of Marx and Freud, which stray far from adversarial "competition" towards cooperative "mutuality." (At p. 35.)

c. Patriarchy and capitalism define two of the major dimensions of domination as it has appeared in history.

jeanne's notes

Answer "c" is accurate. The sentence on patriarch and capitalism is quoted from p. 32 of Fellman's text.

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