Ideas and the People That Have Them
If you want to approach life in a way that that adheres to principles associated with open mindedness, centrism, the free exchange of ideas, and mutual respect with others, then you need to enjoy ideas. This includes the bad ones, too. Creating and expressing ideas is foundational to a free society.
Open debate of ideas is analogous to experimentation in the hard sciences. We want to test the limits of what something or someone can and cannot do, so we begin a rigorous process of examination and, sometimes, destruction to learn about those limits. This process takes place in the lab in the hard sciences. Ideas are prodded and poked in restaurants, churches, legislatures, and on social media. The goal is to learn about them and, if possible, to improve them to be more useful.
This process is especially important for bad ideas. We must grapple with them, test their limits, and ultimately reject them while using what we’ve learned to bolster our better ideas. Of course, this description is incredibly simplistic. What makes a good or bad idea? Isn’t there really a worthiness spectrum and not just good or bad ideas? Can my bad ideas be someone’s good ideas? The list of complications is almost limitless, meaning that there are no bright lines to use.
A really important complication is that people are associated with their ideas. In today’s world, many people wear ideas as a badge of honor. But how strongly should we judge people if they have some bad ideas but also have good ones? Are people who used to have bad ideas but have now evolved their thinking permanently scarred by their past beliefs?
Today’s culture wants to eliminate as much nuance as possible so that there are easier labels to attach and, ultimately, less thinking to do. Thinking is hard and often requires introspection and tolerance of differing opinions. It often also requires one to determine their foundational beliefs about others — are most of us fundamentally bad and just waiting for opportunities to take advantage of others for our own benefit or are we generally good and doing our best to provide for ourselves and our families while negatively impacting others are little as possible? Humans have been analyzing other humans like this for centuries and haven’t found anything conclusory, so there is no clearly “correct” perspective.
Personally, I believe most people are fundamentally good and doing their best. Often, their best isn’t good enough but that doesn’t mean that their intent is malicious. One of my favorite quotes is from Maya Angelou.
I think about this quote often and try to use it to forgive both myself and others for past bad ideas. It has helped me have empathy and better understand many people whose ideas I think are wrong.
Ms. Angelou’s words also help me understand that today is just a snapshot of someone on their journey. They will change, maybe for the better or maybe for the worse. But I can reject their current ideas while still rooting for them as a person. In fact, learning to do this is critical to a life “in the middle” of today’s political and cultural wars.
Putting people into boxes, labeling them, and then dismissing them fully is a key tactic of the various warring factions. Political affiliation doesn’t matter. Republican labels of socialist, elite, RINO, communist are affixed based on little evidence (or thought) and, once labeled, people are justifiably ignored and maybe even mocked. Democrats aren’t any better. Racist, homophobe, misogynist, and fascist seem to be their preferred labels. Anyone with an idea that may fall into one of these categories is dangerous and should be dismissed.
We should do better. We are allowing lazy and shallow thinking to determine some ideas (and their associated people) must be outcast before they’re fully grappled with. Dealing with ideas, especially new or fringe ones, is difficult but necessary and we shouldn’t attempt to avoid the difficult discussions necessary to be able to learn from them. We can’t learn from something we’ve put in a box and actively ignore.
So, bring on the ideas — good ones, bad ones, new ones, old and resurrected ones — I want to hear them all. We all should.
