Saturday, November 21, 2015

Principles of Convenience

One grows up with a sense of idealism. That the world ought to be a certain way.

It has not been easy for me in the past few years, recognizing that the world is not how I thought it ought to be.

I have had discussions and I have seen discussions with plenty of people. They are all reasonable, smart, intelligent folk. But I can't shrug off the feeling that their principles are principles of convenience. Similar actions by different actors are not treated the same in their opinion. Tags and Labels decide everything.
If my guy did it, it is justifiable because of such and such factors, but if it happened to my guy, its unjustifiable?

I remember the debates in school. You would be given a topic and then you had to speak in favour of or against a motion. The good debaters could speak convincingly both for and against the motion. We have good debaters today all around us.

I see debates where the point is to win. Perhaps the point should be to see if you can lose. If you are open enough in your thinking that you can be converted. This rigid thinking where we pick a side and stick with it come what may (loyalty to a cause?) will never allow us to move ahead together.

I grew up thinking that education is the answer. Because in my simplistic world view, education would lead to scientific thinking, and scientific thinking applied by everyone would eventually lead us all to the same logical conclusions, thus removing differences.

I see that all education has done is that it has allowed a more sophisticated glossing over of facts. It was never that people didn't know and that knowledge was the answer. It is simply that people will chose convenience over everything. Introspection is not comfortable, and therefore it is inconvenient.

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