My father was a professor of philosophy, and he would tell us the joke of the “three handed philosopher” ~ a philosopher cannot go through an argument or a discussion without frequently saying, “but, on the other hand . . . ”, giving rise to the observation that the philosopher must have at least three hands.

     But that joke conveys a very profound and important philosophical truth ~ if you want to discover the truth of any matter, you must constantly look for alternative points of view.  It is a dialectic process of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis.  

     In any argument of any kind (up to and including international war), it is indispensable to consider the opposite point of view.  Just consider, as an exercise, that the position of the alternative party might represent the truth ~ what does that look like ?  Another way of putting it is “before you judge a person, walk a mile in his shoes.”

     You may be so hyper-convinced in the truth of your own point of view that you are unable to see it any other way, but, just as an exercise (“in order to help you to rebut the arguments”), try to look at the world from the point of view of the opposition.  What does it look like when you consider every aspect from the perspective of your opponent’s point of view ?  The surprising thing is that you often find that the world from the opposite point of view looks just the same, only in reverse.  If you think that your side is 95% right about practically everything, and your opposition only gets it right about 5% of the time, then, when you switch perspectives, it still seems like “your” side is 95% correct.  The purpose of this exercise is to realize that in order to approach closer to the truth, you must resolve the discrepancy between your 95% and your opponent’s 95%.  You can’t both be right ~ one of you must be wrong.  (But, when my mother would say, “you may be right,” it was clear that she didn’t think so.)

     Now to apply these ideas to some of the current wars going on in the world, let us first look at the case of Israel.  According to the State of Israel, what the Israelis are doing is fighting to fulfil their Manifest Destiny, and to defend their Homeland against terrorists who are trying to kill them, who deserve no mercy.  But from the point of view of just about the entire rest of the human race (all but those who are politically or economically associated with the Zionist cause or the weapons industry, which includes the American Administration and Congress, but not the majority of the American people), the Israelis are angry and aggressive warmongers, conducting a relentless campaign of genocide and extermination of the Palestinian people and anyone else who obstructs their Greater Israel or Zionist mission.  

     So I consider how I would feel as a Jew inside Palestine (in the State of Israel).  “Oh, everyone wants to kill us !  We must kill them first.  But why does everyone in the world want to kill us ?  What have we done ?  Besides that, I mean.”

     And now consider what it feels like to be an orphan child in Palestine, standing in the rubble of what was once his home.  

     There was more, but I can’t go on.  Something about how Donald Trump should consider what it looks like from the point of view of a citizen of Iran.

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