In italy we are discussing about the political problems of Rome.
A well respected journalist compares the media attack to an old one made towards another political figure of the opposite party.

In both cases people against the involved person were all talking about “she couldn’t not know” and so on, while the people on her side told “she didn’t know, why is that so hard to understand?”, and bla bla bla.

Politics aside, the thing is that we tend to have a side and forcefully attack the other.

We expect from the other people the perfect behaviour but then when it comes to us, we want to be understood.
Because, you know, there were reasons for this, and so on.

When we are outside of the problem we apply an objective reasoning, while if we are inside we apply a subjective reasoning.
This mostly happens also because we tend to

1. defend our positions
2. know why we did something and therefore understand the “how we got there”, that’s impossible to know from the outside.

I think it’s almost impossible to have an objective reasoning while we are inside the problem, but this opens up a nice discussion about what we can do when we discuss.

With a friend, few days ago, we discussed about the implication of “attacking the man or attacking the idea” on a philosophical level.
The thing is that if we always talk about the person we tend to attack him/her, while if we try to have a colder approach and talk only about the idea itself, avoiding any kind of judgement to the person, even implied judgement, than it’s easier to avoid the trap.

Maybe we can’t get objective reasoning, but I’m quite sure that this approach, although hard and not always applicable, is a nice way to not solve but at least limit the problem.