Wednesday, March 19, 2014

how i found out i was close minded on st. patrick's day



I met a man the other day. A man I really didn’t like. Somewhere in downtown Saint Petersburg  we sat over pints of Guinness and tried to make some sort of St. Patrick’s Day celebration. A friend of a friend, I was fairly sure I’d met him during my previous life as a student in St. Petersburg, and was fairly sure I hadn’t liked him then either. He was abrasive and pushy and not very clever - a combination that usually doesn’t go well with my particular personality. For some reason, days later, as infuriating as our conversation was, I can’t stop thinking about it. 


Somehow, we got to talking about open-mindedness and freedom of speech.  For most Americans, these two concepts are things we live and die for. With this mess in Ukraine, I’ve been thinking a lot about propaganda. A lot about it. Trying to sort out what I know and what I intrinsically assume because of the propaganda the American education system instilled in me at a young age. I know I’m getting into the territory of sounding like a mad conspiracy theorist, but having spent the last few months bombarded by American, Russian and Independent media about the Ukraine Crisis, there are so many conflicting facts and stories and ideas that I feel incapable of identifying what is truth and what is propaganda. What I’ve decided is that it is all propaganda, divided only by what brand of propaganda you were raised with, and therefore assume is truth. Before I get too far down this tangent, I’ll just say I’m still wrestling with these ideas.


So back to this man. After minutes of meeting one another, he threw out the statement “there is no such thing as being open-minded” like it was an absolute truth. Strike One – there is no such thing as absolute truth and don’t call me close minded! A long conversation ensued about what it means to be open minded, most of us supporting the idea that it certainly does exist and that most of us consider ourselves open minded. A friend made a great point, being open minded isn’t about adopting someone else’s point of view, but by interacting with people who live and think differently than you, you are being open minded. I don’t have to necessarily agree with you in order see that your thoughts, while opposite to mine, have their own validity and worth. That is my brand of open-mindedness.


It seemed like some sort of resolution to this argument had been reached. We moved on, I ordered some Borsht. More friends showed up. Conversation flowed. As some loose connection to this concept of “open-mindedness”, the idea of free speech arose. Once again, as the keeper of absolute truth on everything (note: sarcasm), our newfound friend said, “freedom of speech doesn’t exist”. Okay. Please expand. 


As a half-Brit (half-wit?), this man provided the example of immigration in the UK. With a growing Muslim population in the UK, there has been a rise in conflict over ethnic and religious issues. While I’m not an expert in UK politics and social issues, as a member of the American melting pot, I understand the challenges faced by an ever-shifting population, that, while in theory accepts people of all races, religions and creeds, usually  says, this is a “normal American”, and points to a white Protestant male with a white-collar job. We should all strive to be like the “normal American”, right? Well as a woman I guess I’ll never be “normal”, and what does normal mean anyways? When did the melting pot become a bleaching process? 


Clearly this guy is in favor of the bleaching process, and went on his speech about freedom of speech, saying that true freedom of speech should mean that he can say racial and religious slurs as loudly and openly as he wants. In fact, he should be able to stand on Nevsky Prospekt and shout about it to the masses! In this moment, if I’m being fully honest, I stopped being open-minded. I shut that door and sealed it air tight. 


All I could think was why do you want to shout racial and religious slurs on the street? People have all kinds of thoughts that they don’t voice, it is certainly true, but under this man’s impression, we are all bubbling with offensive thoughts and only keeping them inside because freedom of speech doesn’t truly exist. Whether freedom of speech should allow this kind of public proclamation is, in my mind, irrelevant. The real issue here is the root of such ideas. If you feel so badly that you need to attack someone over their religion or their race, then there is a great failing in this world. And certainly there is, because these people are everywhere. 


As many things in the world are cyclical, so too was this conversation. I couldn’t help but come back to being open-minded. This guy’s racism wasn’t about freedom of speech as he’d stated, but really it was about a refusal to coexist with people different than himself. I sat through an entire afternoon with this guy, which makes me feel just about as open-minded as I’ve ever felt. But truly, there needs to be a lot less yelling in this world, and a lot more listening, observing, learning and understanding. Before I go stand on the street and shout something to the masses, I need to really understand why I’m shouting. 


People make truth claims way too often in this world. I’m sure I do. And that guy certainly did. We are so confident that what we believe is fact, that any observation we make on top of that fact must also be true. What we fail to do, is dissect the facts before building upon them. How can I further an idea, in a really truly progressive way, if the foundational concept is already flawed. How can I tell the world what is right and wrong about the Ukraine Crisis if I don’t fully understand what is really happening there. 


If I’m about to follow my own doctrine, then I’m about to be paralyzed. I’m not sure there even is a way to say something is absolutely true, that a certain logic is completely flawless. Because of that, I’ll never have a solid foundation on which to build. But I don’t want to build just to build. I want to have a knowledge and a worldview not simply of depth, some teetering tower barely able to stand straight, but a knowledge and a perspective of breadth. Something so expansive that no new idea strikes fear in my heart and leads to discrimination, as fear so often does. Something that has open arms and means it.

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