December 8, 2015 – I spent a long and fabulous day, teaching science, and ironically we were doing it all in a church, a place that some of these same people worship in, but which to me merely serves as a suitable place to spread out and and engage in open minded discussions for a few days. It’s just a building to me, but it’s certainly more to others. These wonderful people are open minded enough to ask someone from the big city to travel all the way up to their small community, and some of the people here have travelled up to four hours or more, by boat, in December, in potentially snarly conditions to be here, knowing that any or all of us could get trapped by winter storms. But it was important to them, they wanted me to come up and put on a week long workshop for them, to listen to their issues and try to help them through education, through questions, through logical exploration of issues, by using scientific and fact based evidence, without judgement or criticism on what they may have done wrong, instead focusing on how they might improve practices.
And at the end of a long day, after a boat ride back across the channel to the little house a few of us are sharing for the week, I discovered a hurtful email from someone I used to think was a friend. That message judged me, accused me of being an unhappy person, and implied that I am an angry and frustrated individual. The message judged me without any basis for that judgement beyond the simple fact that I see the world in a different light. And the message suggested a taste of violence against me, that I needed to be “bitch-slapped”.
That was an extremely disappointing message to read because it showed intolerance for a different view of the world.
I wrote a letter to this person expressing disappointment in their accusations and commentary, but I didn’t send it. There is no point in continuing an argument that has reached the point where one party has resorted to anger such that any rational discourse has left the building. The safer thing to do is disengage because no use will come of anything else.
What a terrible place this world would be if we all thought about things the same way.
Some people really should think long and hard about what they write, and if they do choose to write it, sometimes those people who feel the need to lash out with words, would be better served by putting those words on real paper, and then closing the book without sharing them.
Because sometimes the words they write speak greater volumes about who they are personally than about who they think they are writing about.
One of the things I strive for is to be open minded enough that, with a well justified and fact based debate, I am always willing, and frequently do, change my position on topics. With evidence that I am mistaken, the only logical thing to do is admit that I am mistaken. I try, very hard, to adhere to something I once read by Carl Sagan. The quote is featured in the front of the manual that I wrote for the course I am teaching up here.
“In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.” ? Carl Sagan
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