From "Incommunicability" to "Response-able Awareness
Can rational judgment ever solve the post-truth condition — or does it push us further apart?
In an era of increasing polarization, many assume that rational judgment — the ability to reason clearly, distinguish truth from falsehood, and arrive at sound conclusions — is the key to resolving conflict. But what if rational judgment itself is part of the problem?
This model interrogates how rational judgment — the modern, Enlightenment-informed mode of reason — may actually exacerbate incommunicability between worldviews, particularly in pluralistic or post-truth contexts.
🧱 When Reason Becomes a Wall
Rational judgment tends to:
Operate on binary logic: valid vs. invalid, true vs. false
Aim at epistemic elimination: rejecting weaker arguments or “false beliefs”
Frame disagreement as something to be resolved through better knowledge
But when people hold fundamentally different ontologies, values, or ways of knowing, judgmental reasoning often:
Invalidates others' lived realities
Escalates tension by imposing a hierarchy of understanding
Produces epistemic arrogance, reinforcing one's own frame while obscuring its limits
The result is post-truth polarization — not because people reject truth, but because they reject others’ versions of truth as invalid, manipulative, or dangerous. Rationality, without humility, shuts down relation in the name of clarity.
🌗 Knowledge Is Always Aspective
Drawing from critical realism and Daoism, Adler emphasizes that human knowledge is inevitably:
Partial — no view is total (Seeing some aspects of reality)
Situated — shaped by our positions, bodies, cultures, and histories (Our perceptual/cognitive capabilities are manifestations of some aspects of reality)
In other words, aspective— revealing only one face or aspect of a deeper, multi-layered reality.
Daoist metaphysics (e.g., Zhuangzi, Daodejing) resists totalization. It sees knowing as a relational dance, not a fixed capture of objective reality. Each perspective embodies a slice of the Dao — real, but not complete.
As such, the problem is not disagreement, but how we relate across irreducible differences.
🌿 From Judgment to Response-ability
Response-able Awareness is a Daoism-inspired, relational mode of knowing that embraces:
Non-judgmental attunement over argumentative confrontation
Embodied openness over analytical reduction
Situated presence over discursive certainty
Instead of trying to eliminate conflict through “better facts” or “stronger arguments,” it cultivates:
Attentiveness to others’ existential positioning
Humility about one’s own limits of knowing
Reflexivity in one’s mode of engagement
Inspired by Daoist practices like fasting of the heart-mind (心齋), and the recognition that all language is “dregs and sediment (糟魄)” — valuable only until resonance is achieved — this model invites us to discard language once its spirit has been conveyed. Response-able Awareness seeks not to “understand” others in the rationalist sense, but to become attuned enough to be changed by encounter.
🤝 From Incommunicability to Resonance
This mode is especially vital in cross-paradigm dialogue — between secular and spiritual actors, Indigenous and Western traditions, policy and lived experience. When applied, it can:
De-escalate epistemic conflict
Embrace the depth, complexity, and discomfort of reality by honoring more aspects without collapsing into relativism
Enable relational repair even in the absence of agreement
Read more
📝Daoist Wisdom in Post-Truth Times: Rethinking Rational Judgment
📰[in Traditional Chinese] "One Abe with respective interpretations:" a "champion" or a "destroyer" of democratic peace?
See also
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