Sacred Scepticism

An interesting edition of The Sacred Podcast with @TheosElizabeth inteviewing @SethAnzisca about his book “Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo

Tweeted a few responses as I listened – it resonated with so many of my own agenda items. This one merges the opening and closing thoughts:

When I heard the initial remark I mentally added the qualifier in parenthesis, which I had to take as a given in the task of reducing to a single word what one holds sacred – Skepticism in his case.

I would have the same trouble picking one from a word-cloud of Humanism, Atheism, Skepticism, Rationalism – each would risk too narrow standalone connotations. “I’m a rationalist, humanist atheist.” is what I ended-up with in the Worldview section of my Manifesto.

Mashing those concluding thoughts into the opening remark adds that balance of humanity to the stark choice of one word.

Interestingly this thought too:

Actually summarises my “Timeline” approach to the work of all authors whose thoughts seem significant. Where was the author coming from when they wrote this was the whole motivation behind my Pirsig Pages for example. No-one, no history, is truly neutral in any objective sense. “All identity is politics” is a recurring mantra of mine too – all identifying of or with a group involves the implicit agenda of that group. All conversations (should) involve understanding before drawing any other conclusions or actions.

If I had to reduce my own word-salad to a single word it would probably have to be Duty. The duty to respect the other when engaging skeptically in free-discourse about overt differences and the responsibility to follow-up any offence and misunderstanding. Where coincidentally I already quoted @TheosElizabeth.

Interestingly neither my thoughts nor Anzisca’s sacred word concern the Israeli-Palestine content explicitly. It’s all meta. Worth a listen. [Coincidentally my immediate previous post does in fact involve a significant contribution to the mid-east content!]

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