Earlier last week I was walking outside with my daughter as she asked me how we are related to chimpanzees and other primates, I, being overcome with pride, gladly described to my daughter the basics of selection and inheritance back to our earliest ape ancestors.
My joy was short-lived as some neighbors stared at us, slack-jawed, only to then mutter some tired dogma I remember some early morning televangelist spewing years ago. Now my wonderful conversation with my brilliant and curious spawn had turned to a description of why some…individuals… would be so angry at a complete stranger’s conversation.
A curse of memory
I’ve never been one to mind his own business, what can I say, it’s a weakness. I absolutely love having honest discussions with people and I’m cursed with a memory that doesn’t allow me to forget just about anything someone has said to me. So when someone has a change of opinion on a matter I (stupidly) tend to bring it up nearly verbatim what that person had perviously expounded as objective truth.
I understand people do, and should, change their views, especially when presented with new evidence. That’s something that is sorely lacking in our culture. I, myself, have had some major shifts in world-view in my adult life and I feel it’s time we start looking at changes of heart as a positive trait rather than negative, particularly in our politicians and public figures.
Basic curiosity
I have always been an intensely curious guy, and to this day I refuse to accept someone else’s opinion as my own until I have vetted it thoroughly. I remember being in my early twenties and quipping during one discussion that I sincerely disliked communism, only to realize I had absolutely no idea what communism actually was, after all, the only things I had heard about it were from angry old people and self-righteous Americans who likely themselves had never once cracked a history book outside of high school.
Check sources
So I set out to learn for myself. I read about Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao in their own words only to have my previous feelings reaffirmed. But this was anything but a waste of time, just because I came to the same conclusion that I disagreed with their philosophy, I was now informed and had formed something remarkably rare in American society: my own educated opinion.
I had reached a point where I didn’t need Fox News or the Huffington Post to tell me my opinions anymore. I directly blame these two outfits for the state of American opinions. It’s even more disheartening to see family and friends reference garbage dispensaries like Breitbart and Info Wars, places so devoid of integrity and intelligence that I am truly baffled that anybody could actually spend their precious time reading, let alone believing.
Do your own research
So please, if something I write or say actually upsets you, do yourself a favor and look into what I said that made you so angry. If me saying that groups that oppose GMOs are ludicrous, please read an actual article in an actual peer-reviewed journal. If my conversations with my kid about evolution offends your religion, check-out some biology books and build your arguments against it from there. Attack my science with science, attack my philosophy with philosophy and please do us all a favor and develop your opinions from tried and true sources, you’re only doing yourself a disservice if you allow others to tell you what to think. And in the end, if I’m full of it, then you’ll be all the more prepared to put me in my proverbial place. Happy readings.
Whose opinion are you voicing?
NEW NATHANIEL WOODWARD