Learning By Listening
I saw a quote today that helped define for me a phenomenon I have seen all my life but did not recognize. I would ask a rather sheltered friend of mine what he believed about this or that and he often replied that he was raised to believe one thing or another. I was always shocked that he had not questioned what he was taught. He was not a fan of reading or research and he was not really that interested in the other points of view. He had a set of answers that worked in the life he led and that was good enough for him. Later on in my life I began to run into people that had put a great deal of time into research of various kinds. When I would express my opinion on an area they felt they knew a lot about some people would talk over me and drowned me out in order to give me their expert opinion on the topic. Sometimes they were so busy giving their opinion that they actually failed to correctly identify the topic of my original conversation. I would be frustrated but also gave their argument greater weight because … Continue reading