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Originally Posted by Scott  ...I would say that a vast majority of your close friends - if not all of them - are of your same race. Am I right? |
I guess I'm lucky in that Australia tries to foster multiculturalism. I don't actually have
any close friends who are the same race as me.
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Originally Posted by Dave Kaminski As stated in the farcical movie Dogma, I think that people should be bigger on IDEAS and less on BELEIFS, for the sole reason that perspectives change often (paradigm shifts) and new things are discovered frequently. Ideas are much easier to change than beleifs, and are much easier to debate. It's a really tough thing to change one's beleifs.
Think open-source! It seems to me to be the ultimate cooperational tool of the future, and maybe it should be integrated into a lot of other fields! |
I think ideas and beliefs are interdependent, and so focusing more on either one or the other will upset the balance between coming up with new ideas and turning those ideas into something substantial. If someone adopts an
idea, they're much less likely to get something worthwhile out of it than if they made that idea a
belief. Beliefs are strongly tied to emotion, and thus provide energy and motivation, whereas ideas provide the seeds which may germinate and ultimately form new beliefs. So I'd say open-mindedness means being willing to consider new ideas
as well as the beliefs that may form from them.
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Originally Posted by KevinG I would say that you would be too open minded when you are so open minded that you no longer form an opinion of your own, or so much as choose a side. |
I agree. I think of open-mindedness as a willingness to hear different opinions without judgement, and to explore those opinions fully before deciding if it's an opinion you'd like to adopt. If you don't carefully consider the alternate opinion but simply accept it, then that alternate opinion doesn't really become your own and you're not truly being open minded.
So I don't think you can be
too open-minded, as long as you truly are being open-minded.