Sunday 15 November 2015

Goals, Hopes and Fears.

This being the inaugural post for my new blog: The Road Towards Common Ground, let's begin by stating my goals and reasons for its existence.

I have been a keen observer of world affairs for years and, of late, I see what is, perhaps, a bias creeping into some mainstream media. In every conflict, there are always multiple points of view from which to observe, but if we stubbornly make a stand upon a single viewpoint, we will get a skewed perspective of the conflict.

I hope to assimilate as many opposing viewpoints into my reading, and subsequent analysis, as possible, and to present each of them so as to discover a road to some common ground that these multiple perspectives share. I thereby hope to arrive at an honest assessment of the facts - to call it the truth would be inaccurate, since the truth is a slippery concept and is dependent upon whose viewpoint you share.

So, as I said, current events have me concerned enough to create this blog; to such a degree, in fact, that I feared not creating it. A sentiment that keeps repeating itself to me, attributed to Edmond Burke and Thomas Jefferson, in one variation or other, is: "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." Thus, I begin this blog with that sentiment in mind.

I will welcome comments and discussion from all points of view but, while I realize that people will be passionate about their particular viewpoints, I will not allow such galvanized perspectives to become lightning rods for hate. The purpose of looking at an issue from multiple points of view is to bring us together upon some common ground, not to strand us upon separate ideological islands. All comments and discussion must , therefore, remain civilized, polite and constructive. Please refrain from profanity, yelling, or bullying remarks; such behaviour never contributes to a discussion and always weakens your argument. And they will not be allowed.

2 comments:

  1. I may have some contributions to make in terms of posts. I'll let you know.

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  2. Hello Gregory. I will be posting all posts and will then be allowing discussion within the comments so as to keep things on a constructive, civil footing. I will, of course, be open to suggestion for topics, but I will need to keep them focused and limited in scope (the deciding factor being my ability to keep abreast of these varied points of view and the volume of reading it will require for me to give all viewpoints a fair assessment. I'll first be looking at the refugee issue in Syria in lighten of the Paris attacks.

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