You cannot know how all the facts fit together until you know all the facts.
Therefore, you should know this about yourself:
Your brain has faculties for making sense from the information it has. It can fill in the gaps, guess at patterns, and imagine reasons for why things are as they seem to be. And sometimes, you’ll be right. But many times, you’ll be wrong because you settled for an inaccurate interpretation, probably made from insufficient information. And you can keep on in that wrong belief for the rest of your life, adamantly defending it, even, and shunning those who oppose it.
Or alternately, you can remain open to new information. And when you come into possession of some new fact that you didn’t have at first, you can reconsider how that fits in what the rest of the facts you know, and alter your beliefs accordingly.
And you should know that how people manage new information is one of the most important differences in people. The one will hug you and count you a lifelong friend for giving them new information, while another may well kill you for it. Some will not even allow themselves to present new information into the private deliberation of their own minds. When it comes to beliefs, they have got a set-it-and-forget it attitude, and do not want to be troubled with the process of reconsidering and of changing their minds.
Once upon a time, however, there was a whole religion based on the practice of changing one’s mind diligently about all manner of things, and being built up in the truth, and gaining knowledge and wisdom. The people who practiced it were bright and able, and they were called the light of the world. But it has since been institutionalized into a million dull forms that ignore the mental work in deference to whatever they’d prefer more. And if you point this out to them, they’ll not want to hear it. You can become their enemy by telling them the truth—even as they claim to be lovers of truth.
