Trying to keep an open mind in the modern world

 Aloha!

Season's greetings to all of you, we are nearing the end of this oh so wonderful year that is 2020. Looking back it does seem like everything went by in a flash, doesn't it? I suppose that's the way it always is. So much happened so fast this year, most of these incidents made us all die a little bit inside but hopefully, they will make us more resilient as we enter another year.

Among the pandemic, forest fires, the Beirut blasts, and the like (Most of us have probably forgotten about the last two) I noticed that while this year hasn't seen much in infrastructural development we all had tremendous development as far as our psyche is concerned. We all sat in our houses isolated from the outer world for the most part, as we waited in the hope that the world would stop burning and we learnt a lot of stuff we wouldn't have otherwise. We realised that we took a lot of stuff from our daily lives for granted, most of us suffered from the lack of social life(after all we are social animals) other than the sociopaths(Guilty as charged).

But I digress, our thought process has changed tremendously, with the power of the internet much akin to that of the printing press when it was newly invented, we have access to a lot of information and as we read, watch and hear about all of this information it no doubt influences us and we form our opinions about things. Of course, human beings do not necessarily have the same views about a certain topic, heck that's what makes us unique. 

However one can notice, that over the years we as a society have had a steadily degrading quality of debates regarding issues. Well-versed arguments seem to be a rare thing nowadays and well researched seems to be practically extinct. A herd mentality seems to have spread among people, you're either on this side or the other, sides are very polarized in rhetoric and ideology. Name-calling and swearing seem to be the predominant method of responding to criticism. It sometimes astonishes me that we are the same race of people who produced amazing thinkers like Homer, Aristotle, and Tesla.

I personally used to struggle with accepting someone else's opinion a while back, I couldn't understand why someone would have such stupid opinions. However, as time passed and I looked back upon some of my opinions about social issues I realised that most of them were founded on personal preference and practically no research. I wouldn't bother to listen to the other person's side and I would dismiss it as not important to my rhetoric. It's funny to think there was such a time but there you have it. 

So sometime around two years back I decided to try and be more accepting of others' opinions, to listen to their opinions, their reasoning, their line of thought so to speak and as I did this I realised something. Now to people who have trouble accepting others' opinions, I want you to read this aloud, okay? It's okay to disagree with others' opinions. We are human beings we don't need to agree on everything, it's normal- good even to have conflicting opinions. It gives us perspective into our own opinion through a myriad number of ways we'd have never thought about in the first place. 

Now what is absolutely important to understand is that while having opinions that others may not necessarily agree with is fine, what isn't fine is to force your rhetoric upon another person simply because you think that their rhetoric is "wrong". We have no right to decide what's right or wrong and in the end, views are really quite subjective. If you strongly feel that you must convince someone of a certain opinion of yours then do it through concise arguments and thoughtful criticism. 

Of course, you will run into the occasional person or two who won't exactly be giving much priority to politeness and might take the conversation to a new low. In such situations, you can use two methods, a firm refusal to converse with the said person unless they can do so in a polite manner or, silence. Silence is such an underrated thing in our very vocal world, we seem to forget that sometimes silence can convey more than a thousand words could ever convey.

As a sort of TL;DR 

• Keep the conversation civic, be polite.
• You need not accept every opinion that comes your way but at least make the effort of listening to why that opinion was formed in the first place
• Use silence as a powerful tool to keep the conversation valuable.

I will say this listening to others more than actually firing off at them with no reason has helped me grow at least to some tiny extent as a human being. You the reader have the choice to perhaps take something from this post and inculcate it into your life, but you also have the option of not doing so, it is after all an opinion ;)

Merry Christmas and Happy New year in advance to y'all

Aby