How Do You Even Know What You Know?
And why does it matter?
A longtime friend of the family recently surprised me with a late-night text — which he never used to do, but now, since he has a one-year-old son, I guess he’s up all hours like I am. Children are like Macbeth — they “hath murdered sleep.”
Anyway, I’m used to being a lone insomniac. So I was amused to see this message pop up, in the wee hours, when nothing makes sense anyhow:
“Could you please write something about dissenting opinions and why we need to start treating them differently or else go nuts?”
A reasonable question, and he’s generally a cool and rational thinker. I’ll enjoy finding out what’s on his mind, I thought. But the three dots showed me he wasn’t waiting, and he went on:
“But the idea isn’t to bash anybody’s political side for victory points”
All right; he had my attention.
“The idea is — if you aren’t even willing to take the time to figure out WHY you think the way you do, or understand that those feelings maybe came from some singular life experience — or worse, if your “credo” or “faith-based” opinion is really just one of those sentiment-bombs that everybody HAS to believe in if they want to keep their membership in a particular club — ”
