I tend to get along with Conservatives despite holding opposing views. I even get along with racists, who feel I am inferior and should be their slave. I really thrive on discussions with people I don’t agree with because it helps me center my own views based on ideas I can’t conceive from my
own mentality. Speaking with those holding opposing positions bolsters my opinions by forcing me to replace the emotional nuance holding them in place, with substantiated facts. Ideas are limitless and the human mind can turn seemingly established truths on their heads in an instant. Each concept can be whittled down to what I call “Contemplative Sig-Figs,” or Contemplative Significant Figures, which are the details supporting a person’s outlook and opinion. In math and science “sig-figs” are the smaller sub-measurements in an overall unit that indicate how miniscule of a measurement was taken. Those smaller units can also be broken down into an infinite number of even smaller units and the only limit is, not in the measurements themselves, but our ability to perceive them. I am 170 cm tall but one can argue 169cm. My actual measurement is 169.75cm so 170 is a perfect way to describe my height to the average person. However, in a height competition a person who’s 169.25cm might argue that we are the same height while someone who’s 170cm exactly could rightfully argue that I am not 170cm and therefore, shorter. In both cases my competition would be using sig-figs to intellectually achieve their goal. If a person is cutting a piece of wood for construction, a rough measurement of 25cm would suffice. However, a watch maker would need smaller figures like millimeters, micrometers or even nanometers, which give them more sig-figs to make the cogs in their device work together. Atomic scientists use picometers, which are one billionth of a millimeter.
Thoughts function similarly to measurements. Like two construction workers needing a piece of wood cut, broad ideas work perfectly in our minds or when dealing with people of the same mindset or opinion. However, when those ideas get challenged “contemplative sig-figs” come into play. Much like the exact measurements of a watch’s mechanical components, contemplative sig-figs are the small nuances that hold one’s views in place; they are the “whys” that compose one’s outlook. Contemplative sig-figs substantiate a person’s claims to others but more importantly, to oneself. Everyone with an opinion, especially those with opinions many disagree with, should constantly work to replace emotional nuance with contemplative sig-figs. If someone holds a strong opinion but cannot go at least three contemplative sig-figs into the idea, they merely have an emotional outlook. In other words, when someone feels something, “is right” or is, “common sense” but can’t perform a “why-down,” that is, answer three rounds of the questions “why” about an aspect of their opinion, reason doesn’t guide their outlook, rather emotions do. Emotions are completely valid, however, due to their fluidity and incongruence from person to person, we have to rely on fact driven reason derived from tangible details and attestable truths when imposing ideas on others.
As brilliant we feel humans are, we are only brilliant in our own regard. Exploring our languages reveals that we merely cope with bigger truths. Look at the street and city names in any given town. In Los Angeles and countless other cities we have “Broadway” which merely described a wide or, 
“broad,” street. We have “Main Street” which was, well, the main street. “Hill” Street, “Grand” Avenue, “Temple” and countless others demonstrate that we humans were organizing an intellectual system around real things, like the street with the hill or where the temple was. City names are no different. “Newport Beach” was where the “new port” was. “Huntington” was the “Hunting town.” When I first started travelling to Sweden everything sounded so exotic. Once I learned the language, streets names like Nyastorgatan revealed themselves to be “New Big Street” and where this roadway stood, Gamla Stan, became “Old Town.” My favorite street name revealed was “svartmangatan” “Black Man Street.” Here’s the point; we humans navigate the world by anchoring our understanding of it to real things. In today’s politically charged social atmosphere we’ve abandoned this tendency when it comes to truths and facts, which, in reality, are merely human concepts. We’ve become satisfied with gut feeling as a foundation for our outlook and are even compelled to impose our gut-feeling-based opinions on others. It’s like calling every street, “the street” and every city, “that city” and faulting others for not knowing what we’re talking about. Without anchoring our ideas in real phenomena, we’re just romantically fantasizing, and our unique effectiveness, to work with the world’s phenomena through mental abstraction, is pointless.
To produce effective and productive intellectual material that benefits humanity, one has to be able to say, “I feel this is the truth based on what I saw for myself. And I saw this and therefore, believe
this.” Or, “I believe this to be true because of these factors derived from this source.” Those who disagree can then look at what materials the other person used to form their opinion, adjust their argument to address them, then rebut, relating their references to their opposition’s references. From there, the two disagreeing parties can shoot holes in each other’s ideas, ask questions and share information. This process enables both parties to develop broader ideas surrounding the subject in question. This deeper learning helps align one’s views to reality, the only true touchstone to calibrate truth and facts.
Sadly, American education teaches Americans to learn prepackaged ideas with contents unknown. We learn Pythagorean’s Theorem without knowing who Pythagoras was, what real world problems he was trying to solve, or that he studied in Africa for much of his life before “inventing” his theorem. We just learn A2 +B2 = C2, failing to truly grasp the gist of the theorem. Limited thinking is why gun regulation advocates want personal ownership of the AR-15 banned. They only know the packaged concept, “AR-15=Bad,” and that it, “inflicts much more damage to human tissue than other guns.” This is untrue. The AR-15 comes in calibers far less powerful than many other guns they gun regulation advocates don’t take issue with. The AR-15 is merely a style of weapon. I write more on this subject here. With the limited, prepackaged outlook academia imbues upon the American populace, powerful political movements sway American politics back and forth with very little benefit to those who power those politicians careers; the problems never get solved.
Similarly, we learn that “Conservative values,” or “Liberal ideals” are the solution to America’s issues. And that “Making America Great Again” will fix problems inherent to the Western social model. The vast majority of Americans accept these vague slogans as solutions yet never truly understand what these political ideologies mean. In truth, Conservative and Liberal ideologies are emotional and exist in the ideological vacuums; they are only truths because large swaths of people gather based on ideology, exclude those who oppose them, and reassure themselves they are right. 
However, interaction between members of each group leads to arguments and bitter rivalries. America offers a prepackaged way of viewing this division that preserves it. “It’s rude to discuss politics.” This outlook causes Americans to see this dysfunction as a truth and not a disorder to be explored and remedied. Americans fight over politics because the vast majority have strong emotional outlooks about it that they don’t understand in depth. Crafty leaders feed them sugar-pill ideas wrapped in emotional rhetoric. When they attempt to argue these ideas with someone of a different outlook, the dialogue ceases or the discussion immediately erupts into an argument. No one realizes that both parties are at their wit’s end and simply don’t have the material to argue or points to make. People arguing emotional points yet lacking in-depth understanding will feel the other person’s character is flawed and vice versa. They feel the lack of congruity in an idea’s nuance and subsequent differing overall outlook means the other person is morally flawed. Americans’ inability to discuss politics, religion, racism or money is a tell-tale sign of intellectually deficient views, or, ideas absent contemplative sig-figs. It’s common to think Americans don’t discuss politics, money or race because they’re simply “touchy subjects.” This idea is, too, a prepackaged, superficial idea fed to Americans by leaders in lieu of true discussion and understanding. If citizens perform a “why-down” they will see that the core of this notion is American ignorance.
Idea: Americans don’t discuss politics.
Why #1: Because it always causes arguments
Why#2: Because most don’t agree on the causes and solutions to America’s problems.
Why#3: Because politicians, the people tasked with educating Americans about the solutions they create, give the public catchy titles instead of information. Media then exploit details of the plans at the behest of their funders, taking care emphasize what their funding sources wants the public to know and minimizing what they wish to hide from the public. Rather than engendering an informed populace, lazy, manipulative politicians and an even more manipulative media, create a divided, misinformed and marginally knowledgeable populace under the impression they understand subject matter.
Bonus: Why#4 Because America is a Western nation with the core drive to exploit any and everything for individual profit. That’s being the core driver in behavior, everyone from politicians, to the corporations that fund their campaigns, to the media, aim to exploit the fact of American dysfunction than to solve it. We are an “Exploitation Nation.” More on this subject here.
Think of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Even today, Conservatives will emphasize that “you couldn’t keep your doctor” and that it created “Death Panels.” Liberals will emphasize that more people than ever have recently enrolled and today it covers more Americans than before. But can Liberals explain why many lost their doctors due to the ACA? Can Conservatives explain how many more people have health coverage since the act passed during the Obama administration? No! Everyone, guided by our leaders, have sugar-pill arguments and no true grasp of what actually happened when the ACA passed. The vast majority on either side couldn’t perform a “why-down” about their views on the ACA.
Buying a coffee yesterday inspired this section
A very familiar example would be inflation, a word used by America to cause citizens to disregard the debasement of their already-completed labor. Yesterday I bought a coffee from Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, a popular coffee shop chain in Southern California. The price of a small cup of coffee just crossed the $3.00 barrier, costing me $3.04. When I expressed my dissatisfaction to the barista she simply replied, “inflation.” Inflation is the go-to word for Americans rationalizing rising cost increases, and everyone seems satisfied with this magic expression. In reality very few understand 
what inflation is and why it occurs because if they did, they’d be up in arms. When government prints more money, the bills previously issued lose value because they account for a smaller percentage of the overall money supply. I think most people understand this part. The part that doesn’t resonate is the fact that inflation is solely the government’s fault. Citizens do nothing to cause inflation, which is caused solely by government officials’ inability to maintain our economic system. It’s not like citizens are putting forth less effort. Our government aims for 2% inflation per year, which means, as a custom, $100 dollar’s worth of a person’s labor this year is only worth $98 next year; and $96.04 the following year; and $94.12 the year after that and so on. This is not true for the actual labor they did. If an electrician installs a light switch on a home, that switch doesn’t transmit 2% less electrical current the following year, does it? And while our tax schedule does provide for depreciation, homes don’t depreciate 2% per year. In fact, they generally go up in overall value because of another government dysfunction, the incessant inability to build enough housing. A month ago when discussing inflation, Fed Chair, Jerome Powell mentioned his aim to decrease “wage inflation.” This didn’t make national news even though “wage inflation” means rising wages and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve spoke publicly about keeping American wages down at a time costs were rising. Since America teaches citizens limited thinking and that, no one noticed this completely anti-American, (meaning the citizens) aim. By training Americans to superficially think “inflation=bad,” the government was able to speak about limiting Americans’ ability to earn closer to their true worth without consequence. A public thinking in sig-figs would see the truth; the simple word, “inflation” makes Americans disregard the fact that the value of our toil is systemically debased as a custom. Citizens do nothing to cause inflation; it’s not like citizens are laboring less, in fact, they’re working harder than ever yet the fruits of their labor are diminishing rapidly through no fault of their own.
Let’s perform a “why-down”
Idea: Prices are going up because of inflation
Why #1: Because government prints money inflating the supply, making more dollars necessary to make purchases.
Why #2: It makes more money available to the public, lessening the scarcity of dollars. It’s called “monetary easing.”
Why #3: Because it temporarily adds money into circulation before market conditions can adjust, creating the illusion of relief. However, the market eventually corrects leaving prices higher. The competition for work keeps wages low while prices rise, estranging citizens further and further from the American dream.
Bonus: Why #4: It’s customary in America to discount the value of human labor. This is the country that even today feels entitled to the fruits of hundreds of years of uncompensated Black labor, you know. Given this history, it’s only customary that American society is predisposed to drive wages as close to slavery as possible without causing revolt. The powerholders, government, business and property owners, do the same, demanding more and more labor fruits from the debased masses by raising rents and increasing prices. The ultimate end, knowingly or unknowingly, is slavery.
“Why-downs” are simply truths about simple truths. Others’ why-downs will follow completely different trains of ideas and yield completely different outlooks. There is nothing wrong with this whatsoever. In fact, different outlooks are what compose the collective human viewpoint, that is, the broadest way our species can view the phenomena we are subject to in our experience as an existing species. People with well thought out ideas seldom fight or argue because they are confident in their grasping of subject matter. They are humble to the fact others are passionately attached to their interpretations of reality. Rather than enforce their outlook on others, they work within their sig-figs to align what they know with how others understand it. People with in-depth understanding have more questions than declarations. They realize that listening to and subsequently grasping the gist of others’ take on a subject enhances their own understanding. People with limited knowledge usually close off, stick to broad ideas and begin sabotaging the discussion through crass argument; their ideas are not complete. They often attempt to argue semantics or engage in personal attacks, putting the more knowledgeable person on the defensive and limiting their ability to showcase their grasp of the subject. Less knowledgeable people defending their incomplete ideas obstruct points made by their opposition by cutting them off mid-sentence or seizing message delivery imperfections. Asking questions, then obstructing a person’s ability to answer that question is a tell-tale sign of a deep insecurity about the soundness of one’s own outlook.
Today’s American facts when it comes to the individual is based more on what that person wants reality to be than actual reality. This stands at the root of dysfunctional and argumentative American discourse. When people discuss ideas based on their desired truth with people holding opposing and possibly more accurate details, the person, fearing a destabilized, postured outlook, gets defensive. They then consider the person challenging them “ridiculous” because the nuance underpinning their outlook doesn’t align with theirs. If they can attach a social sin, like racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, Marxism or anti-Capitalism to their opposition they can rally society against people attempting to gain understanding. This is arrogant. They enforce vague ideas and dismiss their opposition as “ignorant” or “racist” or “stupid,” creating a pseudo-superior stance in their own mind and amongst the limited thinking masses. In reality, their logic failed. Even worse, they didn’t use the encounter as a guide to the missing contemplative sig-figs in their outlook; they did not seek to bolster and buttress their ideas through debate. This should not be the American way.
America is the world’s most dominant country not because the citizens are mindfully participating, but rather because we are effectively controlled via our minds. Citizens mindfully participating in the American purpose would make America 10-times more powerful and 1000-times more moral. Politicians pretend we citizens are determining our destiny when they, instead of interacting with us in good faith, give us blunt, marginally effective intellectual tools that serve them best. They then direct us to aim those tools at other Americans, who too, are armed with blunt, ineffective tools and aiming at us. The result is like boxing with massively oversized inflatable boxing gloves, the citizen can’t truly be effective. Society tapers the natural human curiosity that causes babies to explore if the television remote is edible, into the desire for premade tools that engender contemplative laziness. By fooling citizens into thinking catchy phrases are real remedies for the mounting plethora of issues preventing America from true greatness, politicians optimally exploit America’s dysfunction. In truth, they give Americans sugar pills, which profitably preserves the original issues that keep these politicians employed 30 years and beyond without solving.
What political ideology works best for Americans and the world our country rules? The two biggest sugar pills fed by politicians to Americans is, “Conservativism and Liberalism.” Conservatism leaves a dearth of resources for the masses then uses barbarity to prevent those masses from gaining control of them. Liberalism pretends to care for those masses while liberal leaders enrich themselves by being the middlemen in the transfer of a negligible amount of the elite’s resources to merely pacify the hungry masses. Both ideologies are sugar pills and neither will ever lead to the 
America our forefathers claimed to want. By introducing the concept of contemplative sig-figs to the masses, Americans will learn to grapple with the nuance buttressing these hopeless political ideologies causing America’s social stasis. Making the “why-down” customary would mean everyone with an outlook could explain to others, and more importantly, themselves, why they hold the views they have. The three-sig-fig standard should be the norm. But the more ambitious of us, much like well-achieved scientists, can go as far into the nuance as their hearts desire. Each nuance also has its own nuance, meaning ideas can be extrapolated into such minute detail that the public can examine the strengths and weaknesses of each ideology and possibly pull from multiple belief systems to form something brand new and agreeable to a much broader swath of Americans than Democracy. This can be the new example for the world’s struggling masses to model their upliftment after. Let’s keep it real; violent revolutions, civil wars, insurrections and coups are old and clearly don’t lead to any lasting peace, cooperation or human happiness. It’s clear that the Western social model thrives on division. How else can the West create version after version of a small group enjoying the fruits of the masses’ labor without those masses rejecting the idea at its inception? Contemplative sig-figs can usher in a new peaceful social system (or systems) beyond Democracy. The lack of contemplative sig-figs is why anyone thinking of alternatives to Democracy will only consider alternatives by White males. Any discussion about a Democracy alternative inevitably starts a talk about Socialism, Communism and Marxism. Everyone’s mind is stuck in a White male dominated box. The focus on White men to solve the world’s problems shows how systematic brainwashing functions. It is by design and I challenge anyone to think of any other system discussed widely in Western society. I suggest everyone examine their views, perform “why-down” and increase the contemplative sig-figs of their views. Take your ideas into intellectual battles and rather than argue, use discussions to highlight the parts of your outlook held in place by emotion. Replace that emotion with hard facts and have the discussion again until you are completely sure of your views, then find someone equally knowledgeable of the opposite view and debate them. Learn their views and respect their outlook and you will truly have mastered the subject by increasing your contemplative sig-figs.
Discussing currently taboo subjects with others would lead to greater knowledge rather than arguments. Our 1st Amendment right is a tool for the World’s advancement. The systemic limiting of the ideas we have the right to discuss preserves our mental and subsequent physical and economic oppression. We are closer to slavery than the Constitution enables us to avoid. This is sad and we have the power to end it now. I suggest everyone of every political ideology increase their contemplative-sig-figs.