We live in a society that glorifies individuals who claim to be "open-minded". And to be brutally honest, I believe it to be a bunch of crap. I have two reasons for that: one, I don't believe anyone has ever been truly "open-minded" and two, I don't believe we ever should be. Let me elaborate on these two points.
I think that every person is a lot closer to being narrow-minded than anything else. Now, before you start to point your finger and scream "blasphemy!" or shout "not I!", let me ask you a number of questions. Have you ever: developed a personality, bought a car, bought a house, hung out with a friend, walked into a store, listened to music, watched a television show, gone to a sporting event, flown on a plane, applied for a job, ordered a meal at a restaurant, worn clothes, had a girlfriend/boyfriend? etc. etc. etc. I could have easily typed for the rest of my life, but I'll leave the list as it is because I think you'll get the picture. If you answered yes to ANY one of those questions, guess what?!?! You're narrow-minded! The reason why is because you made a definitive choice. If anything has a definition or boundary, it is not open, but narrow. And when you make a choice, you exclude everything but the thing you chose. So, logically, to be truly "open-minded", you would have to continually avoid ever making a single choice or creating an opinion. Even if the only choice you made was to be "open-minded", you would then begin the process of deviating away from exactly what you claimed to be! It would be the equivalent of stating "the only choice I will ever make is to never make a choice!" It would be a meaningless statement!
Now, I know some of you are already thinking "of course I'm not open-minded in day to day life situations, but of spiritual matters". But I believe the same case could be made of spiritual matters, or anything that is in the realm of ethics, morality, and religion. Let me ask you a number of questions. Do you believe: love to be a good virtue, religion to be worthless, violence to be unnecessary, truth to be subjective, there isn't a God, there is a God, etc. etc. etc. Again, I could have spent the rest of my life typing out that list. If you answered yes to ANY of those questions, then you're officially narrow-minded in spiritual matters! Again, I would say that any time you form an opinion or belief on anything in life, you exclude everything else, making your belief or opinion narrow.
Let me elaborate on the difference on being "open-minded" (which I believe to be an impossible ideal to live by) and being open to changing your mind. You may say that being open to changing your mind is the same thing as being "open-minded", but I would argue that there is a distinct difference between the two. One stance is purely based on pure passivity ("open-mindedness") and one is based on an aggressive stance (if that may be the right word to describe it!) In one situation, you have no formed beliefs or opinions on anything and in the other, you already have formed beliefs or opinions. I believe that we all should be open to changing our minds on things, but only on one condition: when one of our beliefs or opinions can be proved false or incompatible with the way we see the world. Let's say that you grew up thinking that every surfer had long hair. You would see every surfer in the magazines with long hair and you believed it to be the rule. But then, you go to the beach and see a dude surfing and he is bald. Your old belief was no longer compatible with the way you saw the world, so therefore you change your belief on that matter. You should never change your belief just to change it. There should be a reason for doing so!
I obviously could write forever on this subject, but I will keep this entry as simple as I can keep it. I want to finish by saying that when we argue with each other and reject others' opinions or beliefs just because we seem them as being "narrow-minded", we should remember that every one of us is equally narrow-minded as everyone else. The debate should never be about whether or not our views or someone else's views are open or narrow, but whether or not they are shown to be true. Of course, that's an entirely different subject though!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You hit on some very important issues there. I like that you see some value in being closed-minded, but I can't help but think that you are too narrowly defining "open-mindedness".
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it is that open-mindedness is allowing for the possibility of being wrong. There is nothing wrong with, say, choosing a VW over a Toyota, for example, but, given the limitations of human experience, it may be that your "exclusive" choice, what you call close-mindedness, is actually not the best or it could even be flat out wrong. Clinging to an opinion, whatever that is, and acting as if you could not possibly be wrong in some way, seems to be what most people call "close-mindedness". To use your example of the hair on surfer's head, if you stick to the claim that all surfers have long hair despite the evidence to the contrary then you may be narrow-minded. If you can see the possibility that there are other kinds of hair-styles (or lack thereof) when confronted with new evidence, then you are being open-minded in my estimation.
Narrow-mindedness is, I think, meant to say that a person is committing the fallacy of invincible ignorance, not simply "making a choice". Additionally, and wrongly, people often appeal to open-mindedness in an attempt to befuddle someone into accepting their narrow-mindedness.
I guess what I'm saying is (as an avowed open-minded person, that is, any- and everything I choose, think or prefer may be incorrect or I may be misguided or deceived) that open-mindedness is a pretty good attitude to have, that is, as long as we don't fall into the trendy trap of idolizing "open-mindedness".
Yours in philosophical retaliation,
Lee J Ballard