Knowing The Difference

 

We often do not know the difference between who is honest and kind, and who is dishonest and a menace to us and to society.

 

Most of us can be misled some of the time, and many of us are out to lunch about who to trust and find credible, all the time.

 

Eric Hoffer and I sometime do or seem to exaggerate, as bombastic, chauvinistic, opinionated, loud, and one-dimensional but it is not often because we are wrong or lying but because dramatic overemphasis is our way of bringing to issue at hand to public attention. First, we get the public’s attention and then, after that recognition of our presence, we state the problem as accurately and carefully as we can.

 

Also, free speech and constant dialogue is critical to be expressed, shared and counter-debated to help humans know the truth, all points of view, and to produce understanding of truth, and to generate fresh knowledge about the world and the human condition. Emotional excess and colorful rhetoric as starting points—now let us get down to the kernel of an idea or argument and flesh it out with a satisfying consensus.

 

Free speech, even hate speech, dissenting speech, offensive speech are to be encouraged, for we will work our way through it to the truth, and then what is good personal and public policy.

 

Hoffer and I might seem racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic with monopolistic, totalizing, binary, white supremacist thinking, but if you believe that, you are self-deceiving, wrong, and cutting yourself off from reaching an understanding of how the world really works.

 

Find out what makes us tick, what is our overall plan—would it be effective and humane, or anti-human and totalitarian?

 

On the other hand, some well-dressed, articulate woman scholar and professor might come across as reasonable, soft-spoken, and sensible, but her ideology is totalitarian, exclusive and harmful to people, couched in democratic, incremental tones of reform, it is often easy to side with her, though the effects of her cause upon society is as deadly and final as a cobra strike.

 

You can judge a book by its cover, but do not be surprised when the author slams it closed, down upon your hurting fingers.