Choose your words carefully, because — unless you’re speaking in mathematical statements — anything you say will be partly false. You are not aware of it because you’re speaking from your own perspective with some tacit assumptions, and some unspoken context.

When you remove the context, words and concepts tend to have a dual nature. It’s the old story of Yin and Yang1 — just like that famous pictogram, a word can have different meanings bundled together. It can display this or that meaning depending on the context, and — just like Yin and Yang — even with one overt meaning, it can still contain a seed of the other.

Be especially careful with words like freedom! Two people can discuss freedom while having completely different representations of what it actually means. No wonder that can lead to misunderstanding, non-understanding, and arguments. As an extreme example, if you take most literally freedom to mean “not be imprisoned,” then the U.S. is one of the least free countries in the world,2 which is at complete odds with the popular perception of it being the “Land of the Free.” Freedom has many other more subtle meanings though. Freedom from (negative freedom) and freedom to (positive freedom) are an example of a Yin & Yang-type duality.3

As for assumptions, even a statement like “when it rains, the streets are wet” is not always true — think about Chicago’s lower level! However insignificant this exception may seem to the purported universality of the statement, things get a lot worse when you deal with humanities or non-exact sciences: history, arts, politics, economics etc.

We live in a world that is obsessing over factual assumptions (have you noticed all the hype around misinformation, disinformation, and fact-checking?) while people can’t agree on what “facts” are. If you’re puzzled by the contradiction in terms in “facts people can’t agree on,” you’re not the only one. It’s possible that some of those “facts” are simply not true or plain lies, but I don’t think this explains everything that’s going on. Barring untrue “facts,” the only logical explanation is that people have a difficulty discerning facts from a point of view. They assume that their point of view is the true, correct, absolute one. Acknowledging alternate points of view is where we’re seriously lacking.

When you face a situation that you recognize because you had been on the other side of the barrel before, you will immediately be able to identify with the other side. But if you don’t even know that there is another side to the barrel, even acknowledging the existence of another point of view takes a great stretch of imagination. Too great of a stretch for most people. To overcome that barrier, you need to be well-read, well-traveled, and talk to people a lot.

Traveling — especially living abroad for longer periods of time — can make you aware of cultural differences, and how those can go as far as a completely different outlook on life and the world. However, sometimes you can get the same effect by encountering an extraordinary person who lives just down the block from you. But you would never know them unless you interact with people and find them.

Reading — especially fiction with artistic value — is much more than a poor man’s alternative to traveling: it can take you to places and times that you would not be able to see in real life, to get into the minds of characters very different from you, and all that in such condensed form that you would not be able to experience as much in a lifetime spent traveling physically.

So... Read as much as you can! Travel as far and for as long as you can! And interact with different people as much as you can! Practice the Socratic method, remembering that it is not a weapon for finding faults in the other’s point of view, but a method for giving birth to truth through open dialogue! And for that, you need to choose your words carefully. Always.

Love,

Dad

In 1999, when the Web was young and booming, years before blogs, MySpace, or any such platforms, I was tech-savvy enough to put a website out there. I asked myself that question then. I even had plenty of free time to reflect on it. But I had nothing to say. I was too aware of my ignorance to even try. Looking back, I can now state with confidence that the world did not miss out on anything — I had nothing to say that would have mattered.

Now, 25 years later, things have changed quite a bit. I grew a little wiser, the world got a lot dumber. The people holding their megaphones into the world's ear can be such ignoramuses that my ignorance of back then pales in comparison. They are not shy to spew out their nonsense though.

So you see my dilemma... On the one hand, do nothing, remain silent and resign myself to the collapse we're going through. Or, ask myself the above question again, find some interesting enough answers, and speak up.

Well, you guessed it! I finally opted for the latter.

Subscribe now