Have you noticed how some people seem hard-wired to get you to believe and to act like they do? Indeed, some people seem to operate on the untested assumption that all their friends ought to do as they do. Having learned many lessons the hard way as a result of going along, I’m now taking a more sophisticated view of such things.
Yes, it tends to offend others when you don’t jump on their bandwagons as they pass by your house, but why jump onto something that you know (or should know) that you’re going to regret later? It’s this way of thinking that keeps me off of a great many bandwagons, to the puzzlement, disappointment, and even offense of some folks. And I suppose the emphasis here should be on the word “thinking”, for this seems to be the difference between the guy who says things like, “Aw, come on; it’ll be great!” and “I don’t see the harm in it“, and the guy who says, “I don’t think that’s the best way to proceed.”
I offer this article, therefore, to those who are puzzled, disappointed, and offended. I’d like to explain why I don’t necessarily trust your beliefs and habits. Nothing here is meant to be patently offensive, mind you. Indeed, I want you to know that there are reasons behind it, and not just an arbitrary contrariness. So here are some typical subjects for your consideration:
You want me to vote for your candidate, but:
- How can I trust you when you belong to a corrupt political party whose members, while in office, have violated the Constitution again and again for a century or two?
- How can I trust you when I know that you don’t personally vet a political position before you decide to believe it?
- How can I trust you when I know that neither you nor most of the other members of your political party read or understand the Constitution, and that you all continue to elect the same types of lawless candidates over and over?
- How can I trust you when there’s no reason to believe that your candidate will represent me, rather than your corrupt party? Or that he will abide by the Constitution rather than by the wishes of your party’s leadership?
- How can I trust you when the campaign rhetoric is not about sweeping reforms, routing out the corruption in government, and returning to the rule of law, but merely about how your guy is better than the other guy?
- How can I trust you when you believe that “lesser of two evils” voting is a good idea?
- How can I trust you when I hear you talk about “working within the system” when that “system” was never supposed to exist in the first place?
- How can I trust you when I see your party’s candidates pandering for votes by promising illegal benefits from the public treasury, or by promising to “take a stand” on causes for which the office you are seeking has no constitutional authority?
- How can I trust you when I know that there are issues in this field that you refuse to discuss honestly?
- How can I trust you when I’ve witnessed again and again how you fail to acknowledge, accept, and implement correction on political issues?
You want me to believe in your science, but:
- How can I trust you when I know you don’t personally vet the things you believe, but merely repeat them as trustworthy hearsay because you learned them from some professor or “expert”?
- How can I trust you when I know that most of the things you want me to believe are the results of studies that were funded by unconstitutional government grants and commissioned for political or illicit commercial purposes?
- How can I trust you when you tell me that the rocks are dated by the fossils in them, and the fossils are dated by the rocks in which they appear?
- How can I trust you when you tell me that the question of the existence of a creator God is “outside the scope of science” yet you have no problem whatsoever conjecturing as if it were an unassailable fact that the Universe evolved from a pre-existant and super-dense pebble that just happened to explode one day with no particular cause?
- How can I trust you when the field of science is as corrupt as the fields of law, politics, commerce, and religion?
- How can I trust you when the “science” you want me to believe is funded by corporations who derive a profit from it and who have proven over and over that they’re willing to hurt the public for the sake of their own profits?
- How can I trust you when I know that there are issues in this field that you refuse to discuss honestly?
- How can I trust you when I’ve witnessed again and again how you fail to acknowledge, accept, and implement correction?
You want me to believe in your church, but:
- How can I trust you when I know that you do not personally vet a doctrine before you decide to believe it?
- How can I trust you when I know that your church fails to meet the expectations it derives for itself from the accounts of the original ekklesia it finds in the Bible?
- How can I trust you when your church is always bemoaning the sad state of its own membership, and wishing they were more committed?
- How can I trust you when you cannot even explain and defend to me your own doctrines, but want to refer me to some “expert” instead?
- How can I trust you when, on the one hand, you tell me that every sentence in the Bible is from God, and yet I see so many sentences in there that you won’t lift a finger to try to understand?
- How can I trust you when I know that there are religious issues that you refuse to discuss honestly?
- How can I trust you when I’ve witnessed again and again how you fail to acknowledge, accept, and implement correction—such as when I challenge one of your beliefs on factual, scriptural, or logical grounds and you won’t even bother to formulate a reply?
You want me to eat what you eat and get the medical treatments you get, but:
- How can I trust you when I know that you get your health “facts” by hearsay, and not by actual study?
- How can I trust you when you are not healthy yourself?
- How can I trust you when I know that all you want to see is the words “healthy” or “natural” on the box?
- How can I trust you when I know that you think it’s acceptable to ingest toxins if it’s done “in moderation”?
- How can I trust you when I see that one of the primary paradigms that underlies most of your eating is convenience?
- How can I trust you when I hear you say that the cake is “good”, knowing that all you’re thinking about is its taste, and that you have no clue about the toxins in it?
- How can I trust you when you are fixated only on weight loss as a reason for dieting, and have no clue that there are several other health factors at least as important as weight?
- How can I trust you when you invest so much in treatment and so little in prevention?
- How can I trust you when you’re still using foods, products, and treatments that you have already been warned about?
What else do you want?
Do you want me to raise my child the way you have raised yours? Do you want me to finance my life the way you have financed yours? Grow my garden as you grow your own?
Well, maybe you’ve got something good going on, but if you’re like most, you arrived at your current beliefs and habits primarily through some combination of hearsay and convenience. I found an old poem of mine last night that is quite relevant here:
It seems the very nature of
Progress in my life
Is in the undoing of a
Great number of my
Previous accomplishments!
Having been on this path for a while, I notice that most other people have plenty of errant beliefs and habits, too. So when they want me to jump in with them in one of these beliefs or habits, I naturally question whether it is one that I will find lacking in the future. And oftentimes, it is one that I’ve already considered and rejected. For this, I am sometimes accused of being “not open-minded”. And depending on how you want to spin that, I suppose that the fact of the matter is that I am indeed not “open” to the idea of accepting a position that I have already proven to be erroneous.
I have reached the conclusion that life is short, and that there’s no point in adopting beliefs and habits that I will regret later—not even for the sake of “getting along”. I have proven over and over that it’s better to vet a matter first, putting it into practice only if it can pass the test.
But you want me to trust you, even though you’ve never done the math yourself, and maybe even if you refuse to do it! And it’s worse than this, even, because it seems that somehow, you need me to trust you—to go along with you, as if you somehow get tokens every time someone throws in with you in some way. And this may well be why you take it personally when I don’t hop aboard at your invitation.
I’m going to turn the tables on you, then, and ask you to be open-minded. I’m going to ask you not to assume that I’m a jerk, an idiot, a heretic, a stubborn mule, or a paid shill for some evil and secret society. Maybe, just maybe, I have a good reason for not going along—one that would do you some good to consider, too!
Sadly, it doesn’t take much thinking in this hearsay culture of ours to have a better idea than the next guy. Many folks, however, don’t seem to have much of an idea that they are apt to run across someone who has done more thinking than they have done. They are blindsided, therefore, when someone opts out of jumping on their bandwagon.
I remember telling a racist joke as a young teenager to a married couple I respected a great deal. They did not laugh. That is, they did not jump on my bandwagon—and it was that day that I first gave any serious consideration to the errors of my racist paradigms.
Similarly, I remember telling our friend Michelle many years ago that a nation like Iran could not be trusted with nuclear weapons. But she did not agree with me (and the bajillion other people who make that argument). She dared to stand her ground, insisting that we have neither the right nor the budget to take away another nation’s arms. There’s no telling how long it would have taken me to figure this out had she not risked refuse my idea.
These are the types of people I trust the most—the ones who have “done the math” already, who will stand their ground, and who are willing to discuss any question on the topic. They are the type who want to be corrected when they are in the wrong and who are always open to the possibility that they might be wrong—but they insist on real evidence for deciding such matters, as opposed to hearsay or sentiment.
I think the world needs lots more folks like that!
Jack
