Book excerpt: Jordan B Peterson Paper Fulltext, Peacemaking among higher-order primatesAbstract Facts are facts. Opinions about the facts differ. It is therefore the job of the peacemaker to bridge the gap between opinions, and in that manner, bring about reconciliation. This much seems obvious. But what if the facts themselves differ? What if the basis for the disagreement is so profound that the world arrays itself differently for each antagonist - and worse: what if the disagreement extends beyond the antagonist, to the peacemaker, who sees the facts themselves in a manner that neither antagonist can accept? What then? Ridiculous, surely: how can the facts themselves differ, when it is one world that we all inhabit? But the facts do differ, because the world is complex beyond the scope of any one interpretation. For this reason, there can be disagreement about first principles, as well as their derivatives. This means that the job of the peacemaker is to establish an accord that allows the facts themselves to become a matter of agreement. To do that, however, the peacemaker has to be able to see the facts that lead to peace. To do that, he has to be more than a pragmatic broker of opinions. He has to be a man of deep and profoundly rooted morality - and a man of the morality of no man's land, instead of the morality of established territory. No man's land is the unknown, terra incognita. The morality of the previously established is merely a matter of tradition, agreed upon by all. When traditions clash, however, the facts themselves are no longer self-evident. Under such conditions, it is only the individual who has traveled strange lands who can build a bridge. But to travel strange lands is to risk coming under the dominion of the terrible spirits that inhabit the uninhabitable; to risk becoming the strange son of chaos - someone no longer acceptable to those who still dwell quietly at home. To travel strange lands is to see the broader territory, the no man's land surrounding all conditional moralities, and to learn how to negotiate a path there - but also to lose all belief that there is one way, or one set of fact. (...) Zusammengestellt/ Verarbeitet durch Leon Trost Bücher