One starts off in pursuit of understanding a single issue, following a single-issue path of inquiry so to speak, and after doing this many times with many issues, the paths criss-cross, connecting here and there and what emerges is a view of the overall landscape one is covering with one’s explorations.   What then stands out are ‘deeper orientations’ that were not initially apparent in the A to B single issue paths of inquiry.

For example, on one road we see a change in the shrubbery and on another, a change in the forestry; there is a slight rise in elevation on this road and a slight drop in elevation in another and when we look at all of our criss-crossing paths of inquiry in connected context, we see, with extreme clarity, the gentle ‘S’ shape of a subsurface fault making itself known in all kinds of different ways on the surface that are ‘lateral’ to our single issue pursuits.   Only then when we recognize such common underlying connections can we go back to the single issue roads, scrape away some of the ‘topsoil’ of detailed particulars, and verify that there is something deeper and ‘in common’ that is simultaneously influencing what we thought were a multiplicity of independent  ‘single issues’.

This ‘all-on-the-same-page’ note is an attempt to describe a major below-the-surface source of division, that brings into connection, a multitude of contentious divisions of opinion on a diverse array of particular ‘single issues’, exposing the fact the ‘division’ in these different issues derives from a deeper, below-the-surface source  which is being obscured by the surficial single-issue ‘particulars’.  (more…)