People while I was growing up were not so open-minded. They were open-minded in the sense that they held more liberal beliefs than I did, but many times, they absolutely shut out anything that wasn't their exact sentiment. Anything at all that was even the slightest bit different from their personal beliefs was absolutely wrong, unimportant, irrelevant, and dismissible. And this drove me CRAZY; as a result, I just shut up about it all and sat back as the liberals before me spat fire. I took in their opinions and thoughts and just stored them for reference, because I do not mind opposing ideologies at ALL. I love them, in fact. They keep me in check and force me to question and constantly reevaluate my standards. Where the hell would we be without them? We need opposing viewpoints and I truly can appreciate a good, healthy debate--because everyone benefits from that. The key--nay, necessity--however, is an open mind. But never once did my peers take my opinion seriously, if at all. Thus, I simply learned to keep to myself in order to not ignite any fireworks.
Here's a little story for you all:
One night, I was hanging out with several friends. Everyone had had a few drinks, but no one was drunk or anything. We were just all relaxed and speaking freely, listening to music and having deep discussions late into the morning.
And politics came up. Almost inevitably. The topic was gay marriage being struck down in New Jersey, and basically everyone in the room was unhappy about it. And my one friend Lavender (from this post) began discussing how he feels conservatives are just ignorant and anyone who holds those beliefs are "just wrong." I sat silently, biting my tongue, but he just kept going on and on, insisting that all conservatives were terrible people and so unbelievably moronic.
Well, I guess my facial expression doesn't hide my inner emotions too well, because he looked at me and could tell something was up. So he asked and I said, "Well, I tend to lean conservative. Do you think I'm ignorant?" His face seemed hesitant, but he couldn't back down from his beliefs, of course! So he just said, "If you feel that gay marriage is illegal and two people can't love each other, then yes. I think you're ignorant and dead wrong."
Let me insert a disclaimer here: This article is not meant to be directed solely towards staunch liberals, it absolutely applies to staunch conservatives as well. If you tell someone they are wrong from loving someone of the same sex, you're equally as close-minded as those who say YOU'RE wrong for believing so. Another disclaimer, I am completely abstaining from posting my belief on gay marriage because I feel it is entirely irrelevant to the argument I am trying to make. For the purpose of this article, I do not oppose nor condone, I just nothing it. /end disclaimer.
This is what kills me! If someone has an opposing view, they are AUTOMATICALLY wrong. No negotiations. No effort to even bother listening to another reasoning. ...I really don't get it.
Let me pose a question: The Hindu god Vishnu is blue with four arms and Mahalakshmi, the goddess that embodies love, residing on his chest. Now, just about every scientist would say that this is impossible. No man has another human inhabiting them, is blue, and has four arms. So, believing in this figure would be "wrong," yes?
NO. People can believe whatever the hell they want to believe when it comes to religion, ideologies, morality issues, etc. Even if someone is arguing something I feel to be absolute, indisputable, proven fact, I will hear them out. If someone is going to calmly and rationally argue that the sky is not blue, I'll be skeptical, of course. But I'll hear what they have to say. Perhaps they have some incredible, ground-breaking argument with an extremely solid base and a new perspective of seeing the world. Now THAT'S something I'd want to hear! Maybe they have a hypothesis about universal perception and how no one will ever understand what anyone else sees since all brains are different but similarly trained, so we see things completely differently but are told the same thing, so we believe that what we see is automatically what other people see while the colors we may view might be completely strange, imperceptible, and incomprehensible to the next. An argument like that, although completely strange at first glance, is pretty damn interesting to think about.
So, all I really wanted to put out there was that no one is ever really WRONG in their beliefs--for who can actually say what is RIGHT versus wrong? We hold individual beliefs for a reason and we're all entitled to them, be they religious, scientific, ideological, political, whatever. We have minds that should be used and the products of that should be shared and accepted, never buried in the dirt. Give everyone and every thought at least a cursory chance. You never know what you could take away from a simple conversation.
Open your mind,
The A.S.S.
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