Sunday, January 24, 2016

The other side of neutrality ...

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term nonpartisan as - free from party affiliation, bias, or designation. According to wikipedia, in the context of philosophy, neutrality is - "... the absence of declared bias". Furthermore the same wiki page also goes on to declare that being neutral should imply that we " ... not publicly choose a side".

As time has indomitably progressed, the personal belief that I have held as an early teenager on the ability of humans to be naturally unbiased, has definitively disappeared.

There is no such thing as a neutral view. Everybody (especially I) has a preferred view on any issue. What we (especially I) end up doing is put on a perceived view of neutrality depending on the context of the conversation or situation that we find ourselves in. Some do it more convincingly than the others.

The essential art to any form of negotiation is to find what other side prescribes to, while presenting an allusion to neutrality, and then converge on a point of view that would be acceptable to both sides.