{"id":23937,"date":"2014-08-15T18:45:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T22:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=23937"},"modified":"2014-08-15T18:45:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T22:45:50","slug":"third-way-ism-and-hegels-bluff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/08\/15\/third-way-ism-and-hegels-bluff\/","title":{"rendered":"Third Way-ism and Hegel’s Bluff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u201cThird Way\u201d people are mean. And they\u2019re proud of it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m speaking arithmetically, which is how these folks seem to approach the world. Take any two sides of a dispute, add them together and divide by two. That\u2019s the average, the mean, and that\u2019s your \u201cThird Way.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an elegant approach to answering all questions and resolving all disputes. Provided, that is, that every dispute involves two and only two sides, each of which is wrong in precisely equal measure.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t think of any non-mathematical examples of such a dispute between perfectly binary equivalents,* but I suppose it\u2019s possible that there might be some. And in those cases, I suppose, the \u201cThird Way\u201d ideology might be something other than an odious exercise in self-congratulation and a refusal to listen or learn.<\/p>\n

But most of life isn\u2019t like that. Most of the time we don\u2019t find ourselves uniquely positioned to ascertain the truth about which everyone around us is obviously and equally wrong.<\/p>\n

Most of the time, when someone invokes a \u201cThird Way,\u201d they\u2019re simply committing Hegel\u2019s Bluff<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Simply find two extreme views roughly equidistant from your own along whatever spectrum you see fit to consult. Declare one the thesis and the other the antithesis, and your own position the synthesis. Without actually having to defend your own position, or to explain the shortcomings of these others, you can reassure yourself that you are right and they are wrong. Your position, whatever its actual merits, becomes not only the reasonable middle-ground and the presumably correct stance, but the very culmination of history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hegel\u2019s Bluff\u00a0is usually an exercise in self-reassurance. It\u2019s a way of telling oneself that one is being reasonable. It works for that, well enough \u2014 well enough, that is, that Third Way-ers applying this bluff seem genuinely confused when others fail to perceive them as being as eminently reasonable as they perceive themselves.<\/p>\n

But persuading others isn\u2019t really what the Third Way of Hegel\u2019s Bluff is designed to do. It rarely persuades. It fails to offer a persuasive argument mainly because it fails to offer any argument at all. That\u2019s not really what it\u2019s for. Arguments are made in support of particular conclusions, but this bluffery is more about just trying to reach that state in which any given dispute is concluded. That\u2019s what\u00a0it values most \u2014 that the unsettling argument be settled, not that it be resolved. It\u2019s more about conflict-avoidance than about conflict resolution.<\/p>\n

Having said all of that, please don\u2019t misunderstand me as saying that no truth can ever be found \u201csomewhere in the middle.\u201d**<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure\u00a0some truth can<\/em> be found there, even when\u00a0this \u201cmiddle\u201d is carefully undefined (the middle of what?<\/em>) and even when it is defined in the most self-serving manner possible (as in Hegel\u2019s Bluff). Sometimes, the truth \u2014 or, more humbly, a better approximation of truth \u2014 can indeed be found in \u201cthe middle,\u201d but that is not because<\/em> it is in the middle. It\u2019s location in some actual or imagined \u201cmiddle\u201d is not what makes<\/em> it true.<\/p>\n

\"AncientCosmology\"<\/a>
Ancient cosmology argued that the Earth is flat and the sky is solid. Modern science disagrees. The truth is not somewhere in the middle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

* Mathematical examples are easy. Side 1 says that 2+2=5. Side 2 says that 2+2=3. The Third Way proposes, instead, that we seek a reasonable compromise and conclude that 2+2=4.<\/p>\n

That arrives at the correct answer, but it does so for the wrong reasons. It cannot know why that correct answer is actually correct other than that it is equidistant between two alternative answers that coincidentally and conveniently just happen to both be wrong to precisely the same extent. Radicalize either of the incorrect views even slightly \u2014 Side 1\u00a0says that \u00a02+2=5.1 \u2014 and this arbitrary formula will produce an incorrect result which\u00a0the Third Way devotee will have to accept and affirm. They will assert that\u00a0\u201c2+2=4.05,\u201d without having any way of knowing why this is wrong or even of knowing that it could be<\/em> wrong.<\/p>\n

This is why Third Way-ers can be so easily manipulated by rhetorical \u201cOverton\u2019s Window\u201d games.<\/p>\n

This formulaic mathematical approach also helps to understand why it is that Third Way types never seem to fully comprehend either of the antithetical sides to which their Third Way is the culmination of Truth and History. Both of those \u201csides\u201d \u2014 and they\u2019ll only allow for the existence of two, remember \u2014 must be revalued in order for the formula to work. That formula works backwards from its purported conclusion, X: X = (a + b)\/2.<\/em><\/p>\n

Reconstituting the two (and only two) sides of any dispute so that their value can be rendered as precisely \u201ca\u201d and \u201cb\u201d tends to involve a great deal of\u00a0rounding down or rounding up or caricaturing or misrepresenting.<\/p>\n

**\u00a0Here is an odd thing that distinguishes \u201cThird Way\u201d devotees from everyone else: When they arrive at the middle, they conclude that they have arrived. That\u2019s not really how these spatial metaphors work. If we redefine \u201cthe middle\u201d as our end-point destination, then it\u2019s not actually the middle, is it? That would shift the\u00a0true middle\u00a0to some\u00a0prior mid-point between that final \u201cmiddle\u201d and wherever it was one started. We thus wind up creating a kind of Zeno\u2019s Paradox, with an infinite number of middles and, thus, an infinite number of Third Ways.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Third Way” people are mean. And they’re proud of it. I’m speaking arithmetically, which is how these folks seem to approach the world. Take any two sides of a dispute, add them together and divide by two. That’s the average, the mean, and that’s your “Third Way.” But it doesn’t add up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThird Way-ism and Hegel's Bluff<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\""Third Way" people are mean. And they're proud of it. I'm speaking arithmetically, which is how these folks seem to approach the world. Take any two sides of a dispute, add them together and divide by two. That's the average, the mean, and that's your "Third Way." But it doesn't add up.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/08\/15\/third-way-ism-and-hegels-bluff\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Third Way-ism and Hegel's Bluff\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""Third Way" people are mean. And they're proud of it. I'm speaking arithmetically, which is how these folks seem to approach the world. Take any two sides of a dispute, add them together and divide by two. That's the average, the mean, and that's your "Third Way." 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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