Kid Rock made a really good political video (imagine that!) a couple of years ago. The gist of it is that the Rock (a conservative) gets into a heated conversation with Sean Penn (a progressive). They call each other names back and forth, until finally they get distracted by a breaking news report that some American soldiers had just been killed. They both bow their heads, and then realize that they aren’t so different after all, in spite of their different political philosophies.
I think that’s a message worth considering. We can’t find the truth with bitter anger and name-calling. Everybody has opinions about how society ought to be. Lots of people have ideologies that they’re just sooo sure are right, but subjective feelings are no way to figure out the truth, because people with contradictory points of view are both dead sure they’re right. The only way to figure out the truth is to set aside all preconcieved notions, right wing and left wing, and let reason and evidence determine what position we should take.
Ideologies are a lot of fun. You get all your beliefs handed to you in a box, they’re simple, easy to understand, and even plausible and intuitive (at first glance anyway). But facts are almost always destructive to ideologies, at least simple ones. Think about it: if you humble yourself before the observable world and promise to follow reason wherever she leads, you’re probably not going to end up with a neat little package that conforms exactly to what one side of the political spectrum says 100% of the time. The most likely place you’ll end up is somewhere in the middle, with some mixture of right-wing and left-wing beliefs.
A big part of finding the truth is listening to all points of view in order to make a decision on your own. The other day a family friend was over, and he expressed the view that Obama’s legislation about mandatory healthcare was corrupt and we all had the “right” not to pay for healthcare. My Mom expressed the opposing viewpoint, that we ought to have universal health insurance. The guy said, “I can’t listen to this…” And started walking away. What’s going on in someone’s head when they can’t even listen to an opinion that’s different from theirs? What makes him think he can express his opinion, but no one can express theirs? Why so much emotion about an issue that ought to be considered as rationally as possible? Is he so brain-washed, so far-gone into ideology, that he can’t even look at the other side of the argument? What a sad and narrow way to live. What a constraint such willful blindness is on having the truth. Don’t be like that guy.
