Wisdom isn’t proven right by the masses
Hold your breath… this might get a little political.
The year was 2008, I was a junior in college, and I was sitting in the back seat of one of the university busses traveling across campus back to the student parking lot. I was having a semi friendly conversation with a friend about the opposing views of the presidential candidates.
He claimed to be a Bible believing Christian so I posed a question: “How do you vote for candidate X when he supports platform position Y?”
No sooner had I posed the question then the entire bus full of college students turned around as if I had sacrificed a puppy on the seat next to me.
Public universities aren’t known for their kind treatment of conservative thinking. And that point was never seen more clearly than during that moment. Rather than walking back the question, I spent the next three and half minutes listening to the barrage of personal attacks. One student questioned how I could establish a moral foundation based on an outdated Book. Others booed and many others watched to see what would happen next.
Traffic wasn’t colliding on the road around us. It was happening inside the bus: my belief versus theirs.
According to a Harvard poll, US college students are split into thirds when it comes to political affiliation: 36% identify as liberal or leaning liberal, 31% moderate, and 33% conservative or leaning conservative.
But in that moment on the bus, it felt as though the passengers on the bus had all come from the 36%. Civil discourse flew out the window and the oversized tin can became an echo chamber of like-minded rage.
Like many times before, I remembered the words of Mark Twain, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority it’s time to pause and reflect.”
It was a frustrating example of what happens without balance. Whether wrong or right, an opposing argument provides the critical thinking required to turn a thought into a belief. Eliminating antagonizing sides leaves the remaining one of two options:
To become stale or to become increasingly unreasonably radical.
Like a muscle, belief requires opposing forces to prevent atrophy.