You might have noticed, but I'm a pretty opinionated guy. And, because I have the luxury of having a soapbox via my (very, very, very, very modestly paying) job, I get to be pretty vocal about those opinions.
But, along with all those opinions and columns and jabs at the hyper-hypocritical Christian Right, comes something I think is lacking in a lot of very vocally opinionated people: I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong.
You probably don't believe that. And if you don't, well, I suppose you don't have to. But entertaining the possibility that I may in fact be totally incorrect in my assertions is the basis of my whole worldview. And this is because, at one point or another, I've been completely wrong about most things, political and otherwise.
This next sentence may shock you:
I used to be a Republican.
No, really. Not one of those gay-hatin' gun-totin' innocent-black-kid-shootin' Republicans, at least, but I was a pretty hard-line east coast Republican up until, like, the beginning of my sophomore year here.
I used to think that it was a good thing big businesses were minimally overseen by the government, because whatever was in the best interests of big business was clearly in the best interests of everyone else. I used to think that tax plans were way more important than people's rights. I used to think that Republican tax plans actually worked.
And, perhaps most tellingly, I used to buy into the whole "global warming is a lie" lie. Despite recognizing that science is true because it's demonstrable and testable and works and we lay people know it works because its concepts are used to make things we use every day (listening, creationists?), I ignored the science used to support climate change while taking stock in the "science" used to claim otherwise. I used to think those claiming global warming was happening had "an agenda" while ignoring the fact that those "scientists" who claimed global warming wasn't happening were banked by big oil. I used to think that those who "believed" in global warming did so at the behest of some liberal ideology that was hell bent on destroying business while ignoring the distinct possibility that big business was hell bent on obfuscating the truth to preserve its own short-term interests.
This is, of course, extremely embarrassing in retrospect, especially given that I knew all the basic facts then. Fact: Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Fact: There is far more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than there was a comparatively short time ago due to the burning of fossil fuels. Fact: The earth is getting demonstrably warmer. Hell, a third grader could connect those dots, provided that third grader wasn't ideologically invested in not connecting them.
In short, I was wrong, and I'm glad I realized I was. When confronted with arguments and facts and connected dots that really challenged what I was ideologically invested in believing, I modified my opinion instead of ignoring the facts. Because, ultimately, opinions should be subservient to facts, not the other way round. We should be interested in what's true, not in confirming whatever we happen to believe is true whether or not it actually is.
We should accept the fact we might be wrong. Because, at the end of the day, what the do we know? If you're reading this, you're likely an undergraduate at a mid-tier state school. You don't know anything, and neither do I. And we humans, because of our simian brains, won't be able to ever even conceive of, let alone understand, a lot of concepts. We, as a species, don't intuitively understand probability (as the recent lotto craze demonstrates), can't control our irrational emotions, and, for the most part, can't do moderately difficult math in our heads.
(And, yet, there are member of our species who justify their hatred for others because they just know what the will of the omnipotent creator of the universe is.)
We're all almost certainly wrong about a ton of stuff. And if we're ever going to mature, both as a species and as individuals, we'd better learn to cope with this fact. It's all right to be wrong. Being wrong is a chance to learn. Being wrong reminds you of all there is that you have yet to understand. Being wrong is great.
Of course, I could be wrong about that.
Email: eabenoit@buffalo.edu
