giving context....

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

the way most people, most people, is to
make a statement without context…

“He believes in eating dogs”

Ok, so what is the context of that statement? He said, he
eats meat and as dog are meat, he eats dogs…
you can take virtually every single statement we make
and put it out of context and make it seem dirty, or
insane or "un-American’’ or believing in something that,
that person doesn’t believe in at all… if you take
a statement out of context… so, when someone like
UR says, he is this or that… he has taken a statement out
of context and has made it seem to mean something else…

for example, take a political speech and the speaker says,

“I believe in the evil of terrorism because terrorism
kills lives and we can’t have that”

Now take that statement out of context, and this becomes,

" I believe in the evil of terrorism" by taking a statement out of context…
you have the speaker now believing in terrorism…

the radical right believes in taking statements out of
context and making it seem that the speaker is saying something
other than what he/she is actually saying…

by claim that the speaker in question is a pedophile by taking out
of context something they said,

“I love my children” and by having the speaker say, “I love children”
implying something is there that isn’t actually there but because
the statement is taken out of context, it sounds bad, but it wasn’t
bad at all, it was just taken out of context…

So, if you hear that someone believes something, you should
check into the context of the statement… because most likely
it was taken out of context…

Everything, everything has context… the question becomes,
do you seek out the context of what was said or do you simply
accept the context given?

Kropotkin

2

now this process of giving context also applies to
our own statements and opinions…

now one may say, “The democrats are creating the violence
in America today” that is a rather broad statement and
one requiring context… how are the “democrats” creating violence?
and which democrats to be exact? and which violence are you referring to?
a blank open statement such as the “The democrats are creating
the violence in America today” is so vague as to be useless…it
tells us nothing because it has no context of any kind…

you might say that the “democrats are creating the violence in
America today” but your point of reference is that in one block
in New York, a democratic city, that one block has an increase in
violence, thus to make a broad contextual statement about
how the “Democrats are creating the violence in America today”
but once you put some context into that statement, it no longer
makes sense or has no value…

which is to say, you have to flesh out your statements into
creating some context into which to put your statements…
I could as equally say, the “Republican are creating violence
in America today” now I have to put some context into that
statement… by allowing guns to exist in America, we provide
the means to violence to exist… by preventing access to food,
shelter, education, voting, we are preventing the youth of America
to reach the equality we have and thus set the stage for violence
in black America…to prevent equality, to treat one group less then
another group because of prejudice, bias, bigotry is to ask for,
to encourage violence in America… and the right wing ask for,
demands that we treat white America better and more equally then
we do black America… thus the GOP is asking for, no, demanding for
violence as the only means to achieving equality…

so by providing context, I am better able to present context
in my statement better than the right wing…

my statement is true because I can present context to
that statement…whereas the right wing claim that the
“Democrats create violence in America” isn’t true because
the Republican/right wing is unable to give us context into
their claim…it is just a baseless claim because it has no context…
offers us some sort of grounds to believe in their statement…

so when presented with a statement, a claim, seek out
the basis for or the context for that statement/claim…
under what conditions is that claim true?

Kropotkin