It’s not enough to find common ground and stand on that. Common ground is a nice way to say “the lowest common denominator”.

Finding common ground is a means to relating specifically to what is not common — to going beyond ourselves and participating in something supra-individual.

*

The belief that people must explicitly agree on all matters of importance is very arbitrary and strange.

What if our ears and our eyes behaved that way?

Eye: “A trumpet is shiny and metalic!”

Ear: “No, it is piercing and bright.”

Eye: “I don’t know what you mean by piercing, but I do agree it is bright.”

Ear: “And brilliant!”

Eye: “Yes. Agreed: a trumpet is bright and brilliant.”

The more important the matter, the more our agreements are merely apparent.

*

What matters is not the sameness of our beliefs but the compatibility of the beliefs.

The ear perceives a sound and the eye perceives an image, and common sense conceives a trumpet.

*

Perceive: from Latin percipere ‘seize, understand,’ from per– ‘entirely’ + capere ‘take.’

Conceive: from Latin concipere, from com– ‘together’ + capere ‘take.’

*

One intuition perceives one meaning in a situation and another intuition perceives a different meaning. Reason takes them together as a concept.

*

Affirming what we are: recognition. Affirming what we are not: blessing.