Forwarding Off of Harris

Harris begins with a good example, that in having a conversation with somebody, you rarely can convince him or her of your perspective by just refuting what he or she is saying.  Conversations require that you take what they have said and expand on it.  This expansion carries the subject matter on into new places and opens the mind of whom you’re talking to rather than just closing it to what they already know.  This is critically important with the reading and writing we are doing.  If we took what other authors said and simply pointed out everything they were saying as wrong, this would be a reply that would end the conversation.  Instead, as Harris mentions, we must forward their ideas and beliefs into new realms and add to them.  Mentioning faults and inconsistencies isn’t always a no-no so long as it is balanced out with comments that forward their writing on.  In a short little tangent, this is what I feel is wrong about politics these days.  Debates, political advertisements and other parts of politicians campaigns oftentimes focus on what their adversaries are doing wrong.  Rather than continuing the conversation into new places, adding to others thoughts and really opening up the political world to the public, they focus on scandals and mistakes.  This is why we are experiencing such slow progress in this country.  The democrats and republicans aren’t forwarding off of one another but simply replying.  This creates a static environment.  Returning to what we are doing in blogging we are commenting on the writing of others and continuing the conversation.  It is important for us to look at the works of others and forward their ideas by using examples, invoking their expertise, drawing on terms and putting our own spin on their concepts.  The New York Times as I discussed in a previous post forwards many ideas off of the White House Blog.  Information that comes out on the WHB for example on the budget then gets looked at by journalists at the Times and they draw on examples, use the expertise of quotes from the president, draw on terms and they even put their own political spin on the news.  Its interesting to see the tie in between the two.