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i think that there is a reality to any situation, and I also think that multiple supposedly opposing interpretations can all be true.... but i think the blindmen feeling out an elephant is a bad metaphor for the situation https://t.co/pQvX3wxDfH
there is a component of "we see different slices of reality" what i want to focus on is how disagreements about "facts" can be a disagreement about "actions", and as long as certain "facts" can reliable trigger certain "actions", people will argue over the "facts"
"genocide" is a classic example. the word was coined in the wake of the holocaust to name "the crime with no name". US and the UN both created legal definitions of genocide. lots of countries swore to never let a genocide happen again. this word was now a Symbolic Trigger
if you can get people to agree to use the word "genocide", that triggers the commitment they made to intervene. so the word has two meanings, 1) the legal definition, and 2) "a genocide is an atrocity that we have chosen to intervene against"
so what happens when there exists a Known Symbolic Trigger that could in fact be activated by reasonable interpretations of the current situation, but you DON'T want the rule to be applied? you either try to get the rule amended, or you argue that the rule *doesn't apply*
again with genocide, when people started getting slaughtered in Rwanda, various governments hemmed and hawwed over if it could be called a genocide this was not a case of a blind man feeling a different part of the elephant this the path that was easier than amending the rule
Conflict Is Not Abuse talks about how this applies to the escalation of interpersonal conflict the State can't do metic conflict resolution, but they can create big red Doomsday button that you can press if you can apply certain words
Sarah Schulman says it better, but tldr; Both Supremacy and Trauma can elicit similar panic/rage/fear when they are poked via interpersonal conflict If conflict is intolerable, and u can make it go away by getting it deemed Abuse, there's a pressure for escalation over repair
possible root issue; it's REALLLY HARD TO GO FROM ACTUALLY FACTS TO ACTIONS not in a philosophical "is/ought" gap sorta way, but in a Hard Problems Actually Require Serious Deliberation sorta way and it's REALLY HARD to make serious deliberation scale
Schulman points to resolving conflict as requiring an invested and caring community that knows the parties involved lol, that's nothing like what courts look like most widely accesible resolution mechs are hella lossy and just require getting certain "facts" to apply
put another way: if it's super obvious that fact X should lead to action Y, people have motive to lie about X if they don't like Y if you're in a group that get's decisions aren't obvious, it's safer and easier to tell it like it is