So what is the point of opening the mind?
You want to be open and reasonable, of course, but based on what?
I mean, everyone has a worldview.
What I mean to say is that we don’t open our minds, we don’t think, and we don’t consider other ideas, without established beliefs.
No thinking and reason exists alone, after all.
For while, I may be willing to discuss the merits and demerits of a particular economic theory, I don’t do it from a place that is without a firm and long-earned position.
I just believe that (most) people should say (most) things with a little less conviction.
And remember, with regard to being open, a change in your thinking can change everything.
Chesterton said of H. G. Wells—with whom he disagreed about almost everything but remained in cordial relations—that “he thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the mind.” Chesterton, however, was by contrast “incurably convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” I like Chesterton’s gustatory metaphor: it suggests that when the mind is governed by properly settled convictions, only then can it be truly nourished.
-Alan Jacobs, How To Think
