Enjoying the view from Limbo
What does it mean to be open-minded, in the sense required for serious learning and self-development? It certainly does not mean assuming that every idea is as good as every other, or that no one’s perspective is truer than anyone else’s. That is not openness; it is relativism. Relativism is the death of thinking, philosophy, and self-development, because it suffocates the desire that motivates…
The most effective way to enslave a man — most effective in the sense of providing the greatest possible assurance that one need fear no significant rebellion — is not to forcibly restrain him, against his desire to flee. For such restraint merely reminds him, at every moment, that there is a place which your interests demand that he never go, thus whetting...
The open-minded person says, “I will always try to give a fair hearing to words and ideas that I do not like, or which make me uncomfortable; for my preference and comfort are not valid measures of the true, the good, and the beautiful, which will as often as not prove to be cleverly hidden behind some discomfitting word.” The closed-minded person says,...
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