Over at languagehat today, in a post entitled German in America, there was an interesting tangent on the comment threads that took off from an observation about the different ways that the phrase "I just don't understand it!" can be used rhetorically. The discussion took a detour through a very useful observation by a poster with the handle Grumbly Stu: In fact it's easy to recognise when you are on the wrong track - it's when you find yourself getting nowhere.
But it was the following comment from him that really caught my eye:
Of course I don't regard myself as getting nowhere merely when other people don't agree with me. That's because I no longer try to get people to agree with me. I used to try, but then changed my goals when I found I was getting nowhere.Now there are people who don't bother to disagree with my occasionally unusual views, but instead prefer to resent the very fact that I don't agree with their commonly held views. This has given me an opportunity to rethink, in theoretical terms, what the relationships might be among understanding, not understanding, consent and dissent.
Clearly rocking the boat is not conducive to consent, although it is a good policy for getting the boat off the discursive rocks. People who moralize everything under the sun should not be surprised when they meet with as much dissent as consent. Morality is inherently divisive.
The second paragraph of his comment really resonated with me, as it echoes many of my own experiences and follows a line of thought I've been tossing about in my head concerning the vitrol in much contemporary right wing discourse. So I took up Grumbly Stu's challenge for myself and spent the evening trying to rethink what some of the relationships among and between understanding, not understanding, consent and dissent might be.