Idle Musings - 1

I have been thinking on the nature of disagreements. As a general concept, where two ideas collide. I notice how you have individuals who will only accept pre-accepted ideas, discarding anything else, for example if they are first told the sky is blue, they would resist the idea that the sky is transparent, but turns blue with exposure to certain light sources(the sun).

With the people I am referring, something must specifically crash the ideas currently in play, a vast majority will not shift their perceptions. As an example, an individual taught that all police are bad, being saved by an officer not willing to use their sidearm. Though this example is not always enough to break the idea, and force the individual to re-evaluate it is only to highlight the idea.

With these thoughts in mind I come to a thought about these things, how one interacts with ideas. You have individuals who constantly question, and interrogate each idea as it is presented, my brother being one such individual. He had only recently helped me with the previous posts, hearing my side of the situation, and acting on his own to discover the truth. He trusted me, but still verified I was, indeed, worthy of that trust. The reason I can be sure of that is had he not trusted me, he wouldn't have bothered to verify, instead electing to do, as many do, discard my words and insist that I not bring these ideas to him again.

This brings me to the second type of individual, the kind that interrogate only new information, or information that has been directly proven to them. I am referring to that type of proof that you can't shrug off, that video recording of a trusted family member stealing from Grandma, the photos of a lover in another's arms. These things that rend the soul by challenging us to either accept the truth or blind ourselves to what has been done.

It is my belief that this second group, in their unwillingness to even consider that someone else has information that reveals a greater truth than the one currently inside their head, is the group that needs to be taught. Given guidance on how to safely integrate new bits of data without worry of betrayal of their friends.

I am not speaking of any groups on one particular side of any aisle, but individuals who found a mode of being that doesn't give them the room they need to properly interrogate the world around them. These range from those dusty bible thumping conservatives who believe violence in video games caused children to go and commit crimes, to the individuals who have decided that everything is just what you perceive in your mind camping on the progressive side of things.