I'm reading Plato (again) and that means I'm full of ideas I can't quite get a handle on. At times I seriously dislike Plato; I think he simplifies the concept of transcendental truth and uses rhetoric in the exact way he chastises others for doing so. But, as I reread Gorgias, I see value in some of the ideas I was missed when I was younger.

Most specifically, Socrates puts forth the notion that honesty within the self is more important than honesty to the convention. I find myself interpreting that to mean that if one approaches truth--the abstract concept of truth--within her own thoughts and, using all the tools of philosophy cannot disprove the truth discovered, it matters more that she stand by that truth and prove it then it does that she fall in line with social conventions and ideas. Furthermore, regardless of the number of people who bear witness against her truth, it does not make it less true.

Everyone following me here?

Now, on the one hand that is a fairly normal concept in modern society. We are told to "stay true to ourselves" and any other manner of clichés, but as I kept reading I was thinking how often we take our truth, or what we perceive as our truth, and attempt to supplant someone else's ideas with it. This isn't a wrong thing, obviously if I meet someone who believes it's right to kill babies I'm going to attempt to persuade them otherwise, but in lesser instances, all the gray areas that make up morality, when we believe we have attained transcendental truth how often do we believe, either privately or publicly, that we know more about a person than they know themselves?

This whole thing is going to be circular and possibly make no sense by the way. I just want all of you to know that I know that.

I'm thinking about this chiefly in response to a rather exciting weekend where notions of myself were directly challenged--a good thing--but at one point in that challenge the person challenging acknowledge that he was telling me what I felt. On the one hand, if someone believes they know how I feel more than I do, there is no more conversation to be had because he is making meaning for me instead of conversing about what I am saying. But, the possibility exists that the one challenging me sees an aspect of myself I am blind to--hence the purpose of the challenge.

So, I've been thinking on this for two days now. I still (actually) believe I was right about both what I said during this challenge and the reasons for it, but what has me stuck is the idea of educated, insightful people thinking they know more about someone than that person does. I think I know more than people all the time. This blog is proof of that. But I'm stuck on the problem of insight being truthful sometimes and others being incapable of knowing our minds better than ourselves. Obviously there are many that don't know their minds at all--they don't know what they know, they don't know why they think what they do, and their knowledge is surface level at best. In those cases I, perceiving insight into why they are saying what they are saying, assume (almost subconsciously at this point) that I understand them better than they understand themselves. The problem with that, possibly, is that until they have a concrete reason for their thinking there is no understanding what they think and feel beyond recognizing that they don't know what they think and feel. There's a lot of circular reasoning going on here, but I'm struggling through the cases where people did recognize something about me I didn't know myself, and the cases where we see someone in a similar situation to ourselves (current or past) and assume we know their intentions and their outcomes better then they do.

It goes back to wisdom; I, having lived through situation X, see you currently experiencing situation X and assume that what you are feeling is similar enough to what I felt that I can offer advice, understand, or predict the outcome.

Perhaps the answer lies in recognizing ourselves well enough to know why, how, and what we are projecting onto the other person. For example, if I possess as thorough and complete an understanding of situation X as possible, then I can examine someone else's experience with no conscious or subconscious personal agenda. Instead I am hypothesizing that they feel as I did (or however it is I perceive they feel) while remaining completely open to their interpretation of their feelings as valid. That is, of course, a more true representation of communication--I do my best to understand what you are trying to say while offering the meaning I make out of it in return instead of assuming I know more than you.

But it's the part where we trust what the other person says and know ourselves well enough to recognize moments when we promote our own truths so strongly because we don't want, or are unable, to accept another truth as feasible. Wars have been fought over such things so it's almost silly for me to talk about it here I understand. But it's a problem because you--your identity, what you are, etc--are never stagnant and thus we can never know ourselves completely, or at least all of our motivations. But, I do think we can be conscious of the possibility of subconscious motivation in ourselves and so willing and prepared to reexamine situations that challenge what we thought we knew.

I think what I'm getting at here is an ethics of conversation. To postulate that we know someone better than they know themselves would be false I think, and therefore unethical. But, as we can recognize discontinuities is behaviors and arguments we can point out that what someone else is feeling or believing contradicts itself and, therefore, they don't recognize the implications of what they're saying or what it is revealing about their thoughts, emotions, and motivations.

It's a thought. I'm going to read more Plato now so my headache can grow and multiply.