Edulcorating the Sour, Enlightening the Ignorant

I had the chance to expe­ri­ence some strong, uncere­bral con­vic­tion from some­one I, unfor­tu­nate­ly, did­n’t have much respect for. I imag­ine that it was caused by a refusal to under­stand any­thing out­side of her frame of mind. She seemed so zeal­ous in her opin­ion, so upset at any men­tion of the con­trary, that any attempt to loosen her resolve proved to be more than fruit­less.

It seemed as if she was mak­ing up for her igno­rance in strength of opin­ion. In order to seem as if she was knowl­edge­able about the sub­ject, she became extreme­ly opin­ion­at­ed.

How can one argue with such a dif­fi­cult per­son? My answer is sim­ple; I don’t. Argument is some­thing that I’ve giv­en up on com­plete­ly, in gen­er­al. I now find dis­cus­sion, as opposed to argu­ment, to be an exer­cise in loquaci­ty and con­ver­sa­tion. At my age, it seems that most peo­ple have sur­passed what Erikson believed to be the iden­ti­ty vs. role con­fu­sion stage. They have become con­fi­dent in their beliefs, and there is lit­tle that can be done to show them a new view. Of course, there are always a few peo­ple who can keep a beau­ti­ful­ly open mind, accept­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of any­thing, per­haps some­thing as adven­tur­ous as admit­ting they are wrong.

There always seems to be a fine line between some­one who is opin­ion­at­ed for shal­low, inse­cure rea­sons, and some­one who is opin­ion­at­ed valid­ly. Unless one attempts to under­stand both cas­es, they both seem the same.

The adven­ture becomes not the enlight­en­ment of the for­mer, but the dis­tinc­tion between the two.

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