One of the beautiful things about humans is our ability to grow and adapt in many different kinds of situations. We eventually can see when we are wrong and adjust course, sometimes this takes many many years. Consider for a moment how long people believed the earth was flat, consider the hardship that was placed on those who dares to say otherwise!
I think it is important for me to remind myself often that I could always be wrong. I don’t think though that this is something many others do and it can be very painful dealing with people who are closed minded I have to admit.
A college professor friend of mine posted the following:
2/3 of women killed with a gun are killed by their partner or ex-partner. So don’t give me that crap about people needing guns “to protect their family.” The gun a family is most likely to need protection from is the one that’s already in their house.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/273-40/15693-focus-a-rape-a-minute-a-thousand-corpses-a-year
After consideration, this was how I responded:
I wanted to share this and then a sickening feeling hit me again. When talking to certain people about certain things… presenting FACTS does NOTHING. Why? Because those people will simply say they don’t believe the facts, that it couldn’t be true, that just because it is on the internet… that’s not their personal experience. No matter what source I pull up to re-state the fact, it doesn’t matter, they simply don’t believe it. I don’t understand…. I understand questioning facts when there are clear motives behind them, conflict of interests, and such things but really just off handedly with no research into it dismissing things because one doesn’t agree with it. For most of my life I thought that “reason and logic” where obvious but now…. knowing people who will not look at facts, not even research for themselves, and just hold fast to their opinions and to hell with everyone else…. In short, I could share the above but the ones who need to read it are the ones who will say it is bull shit and they know so many people “yadda yadda” It is kind of hard to talk to people like that. Kind of hard to talk to them about anything because you can’t trust them to engage in an intelligent conversation. If they do not agree, that’s that, end of conversation. It is really specially hard to be related to such people and care for them but have no interest in talking to them as it is painful to do so. Sorry for venting, this is just such a sad fact and I now understand that it simply will not matter to some people because they will refuse to believe it or even research it.
Trying to grasp hope for humanity
I wonder how long it took for Doctors to stop bleeding people once facts came around showing it was not effective and was actually harmful? Look how long it has taken for society to be out raged over the death caused my smoking, something some doctors once said was actually healthy. Still, some people don’t believe smoking is deadly. Some people though also don’t believe we landed on the moon. Some people think Dinosaur bones are some trick of the devil. Some people think that beating women is ok, it is in the bible after all. There are so many things that humans still believe that lack real evidence, reason and logic and so I wonder why I am shocked by it.
I wish those people with closed minds understood what it was like to talk to them, it is like talking to a rock. It doesn’t listen, it doesn’t change, and it doesn’t seem to have awareness about anyone but itself. It is so sad to think of it that way, but that is how it feels and how much it accomplishes.
If your going to be closed minded, please spare those of us who want to learn, and grow, and change and make things better. We want to have real conversations with real information and not just be dismissed because your opinion rejects facts. Show me the information that your opinion is founded on, show me the facts. If I am wrong, I can accept that. I rather be wrong and know it, than be wrong and not know it.
This is a great piece. It really is scary when dogma trumps fact.