Tyranny of the Innate

What we perceive and judge is always compared against our own experience. Things are judged with a perpective of 'same' and 'different', with varying degrees of each.

You see a person walking towards you on the street (okay, on the sidewalk). You may notice that the person is shorter than you but has close to the same hair color. They speak the same language as you. You are calm that day but they seem very angry.

Your experience of them is flavored with a mix of sames and differences.

Sames: Hair Color, Language.
Differences: Direction of movement, Height, Attitude.

It is the contrasts that give our experiences their uniqueness. You can attempt to see where they are from your shared sameness and attempt to understand the differences.

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Children challenge their parents (in many ways). When they get to an age where they can question, the most common query is 'Why?'.

Very often, the parent replies with 'BECAUSE!'.

The answer is innate, or unexplainable. The argument does not have enough language in common with both of you to properly convey the answer. There is not enough sameness to relate.

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If you give directions to someone, they may go like this:

"Start at the Safeway in Berkeley going North. Turn left at the third light. Go two blocks. Turn right on 3rd St. We are the 4th house on the left."

Directions (bad, though they are) are crucially dependent on the starting point. Where they are describing and where you will begin following their explanation are the same. If you forget the Safeway part, you are lost.

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Why do some consider transsexuality wrong? How could they not understand?

Because their experience does not have the sameness to follow the explanantion. The idea that their body and mind are misaligned is completely out of their experience, so different, that they have very little chance of understanding.

So how do you explain things? You have to find the points of sameness to orient the explanation. Find out what they do understand then proceed from there. The trick is finding the points in common.

Take heart. Even if your initial explanations are not fully accepted, with experience comes linkage. We find common points along our journeys. With time comes opportunity. With relationships come context. With context come points of sameness and therefore easier communication.

With communication comes enlightenment.