Recently, there was an article written about the Duke lacrosse "rape" case. The article, to say the least, was controversial. To put it a little more succinctly, it really pissed off a lot of people! While the tone of the article itself may have been a bit heavy-handed, and the title was more than a bit heavy handed, to my mind, the points made in the article were at least worthy of intelligent discussion and debate.
Unfortunately, very few people discussed or debated the points made. Instead, not unlike Flush Lintball in rare form, personal attacks were leveled against anyone whose opinion dared to stray from the "straight and narrow" path of "progressive" thought. The author of the original article was called pretty much everything but a white man...well, maybe he was accused of being a white man, and all the negative connotations that "condemnation" contains.
I am not here to rehash that particular article. After over one hundred separate comments made about that article, and the one written by Rob about his decision to publish the article, that issue has pretty much been ground into the dirt.
What I want to discuss is the fact that there was little cogent discussion on the article. Instead, there was a lot of accusation and finger pointing. The discussion was, to my way of thinking, the ultimate debacle of closed-minded garbage. It was something I never thought I'd see at a site dedicated to "progressive" thought.
For a long time, one of the guiding principles of my life has been "question authority". I have broadened that principle slightly to "question everything". I regularly question my reality, my ideals, and most importantly, that which I hold to be "the truth". Somehow, I assumed that questioning reality was something that was done regularly by those who claim to be progressively minded. Somehow, I figured that there would be a few people who were really brave enough to question whether or not the feminist reality was a good reality; whether their agenda is a good thing, or not.
How wrong I was...and how disappointed.
I was disappointed because I really thought that being "progressive minded" also meant being open minded. Reading the discussion on that issue proved many things to me: 1) Many claim to be "progressive minded", few that do are open-minded. 2) Few indeed are those willing to question reality beyond their comfort zones. 3) Talking points aren't the exclusive property of the right. 4) Sacred cows are bad things when they are ideologies.
Many claim to be "progressive minded", few who do are open minded:
To be open-minded is to be willing to look at all sides of an issue. To be open-minded is to be willing to admit that your ideas and ideals might be wrong. To be open-minded is to be willing to say you are wrong, and are also willing to re-examine what you believe to see if you really believe it.
Not unlike the bible-belters who follow the stagnating, "god said it, I believe it, that settles it," paradigm, most of those who posted comments seemed unwilling to realize that no one has an ultimate lock on the truth. This closed-minded attitude causes all manner of trouble in this world. Is it not DUBYA's unwillingness to say he fucked up in Iraq that keeps the blood flowing in the streets of Baghdad? Yes it is. His mind is closed to reason. Unfortunately, so are some of the minds of people who comment here.
If we are going to call for others to see life from our point of view, then it is our responsibility to attempt to see the point of view that other people hold. Discourse and discussion are two-way streets.
Few indeed are those willing to question reality beyond their comfort zones:
Life is a fluid, ever-changing confluence of event, circumstance, and chaos. Death lurks around every corner waiting to pounce on us when we least expect it. There is nothing permanent. True safety is a myth; just ask the tornado victims in Greensburg, Kansas.
Reality is just as fluid. A mere twenty-five years ago, the Internet was the exclusive playground for ultra-educated geeks. It wasn't a shopping center, a porno playground, or a place where sexual predators hung out looking for kiddies. Kiddies were nowhere to be found on the Internet. A mere fifty years ago, a computer took up huge amounts of room, ate huge amounts of power, and gave off huge amounts of heat. A mere hundred years ago, the "horseless carriage" required a strong arm just to get started.
My how reality has changed. Now the Internet is another over-exploited media space. While informational interchange still happens on the Internet, only the "old school" purists and ultra-geeks even give a shit about that part of the 'net. The Internet is Ebay, PayPal, and Amazon.com. There is very little in the way of pornography that can't be found on the Internet, if you know where to look, and are brave enough to tempt fate. The computer I am typing this article on contains more digital storage than existed on the entire planet a mere thirty years ago, and contains all that storage space in a package that's less than one hundredth of a percent as large as that fifty-year old computer. Nowadays, cars have more computer power than was available in all of the Apollo moon missions combined, both in space and on the ground. There's even a car that can park itself.
