An essay on open-mindedness…

What does it mean to be truly open-minded. Open-mindedness is a popular concept (often coupled with its buzzword cousin tolerance) strewn about in our society with reckless abandon as a way to win support for political leaders or try to convince people of their own self righteousness. To be truly open-minded is it necessary that we attend gay pride parades, or that we immerse ourselves into the million man march, or other such alternative movements, or do we need only to tolerate those who are different than us, and not take hostile stances to those within our population? Which of these must we abide by to attain this state of rhetorical nirvana? I say neither.

Before I dive into my ideas about this topic, let me first address the backdrop upon which they were drafted. I have spent my entire life in a Christian family, going to Christian church and celebrating Christian holidays. I am a Christian. Now before you dismiss me as nothing more than a Bush-loving, gay-bashing, bible-thumping bigot, let me say that I believe the modern church has misplaced much of its focus. The vigilant stance taken by many of my fellow believers has completely tarnished the reputation of Christianity outside of its community. I believe that as a rule, Christians are well-intentioned, but I do believe that many have been led astray by a few who preach nothing but fire and brimstone, and spew messages of intolerance. I could go on for quite some time about my beliefs regarding what the pulpit should be focusing on, but that isn’t what this essay is about.

With that out of the way, I can actually address the question I posed to start this essay. When it comes to open-mindedness there seems to be two distinct camps. The first of the camps that I will address is embodied by the idea that to be open-minded towards other cultures, we must embrace these cultures. To be completely blunt, the advocates of this idea are typically idealistic liberals who actively campaign for increased rights and tolerance for minority groups. While it is in many cases noble to take this stance (such as the abolitionist movements in the 1850s or the civil rights movements which followed a century later), for the issue of open-mindedness this stance is overzealous. The reasoning behind this stance is typically that the best way to gain tolerance for a group is to embrace that group and learn about the individuals within and the true motives behind alternative movements. The fundamental problem with this is that when you live in a country which endorses no religion or system of beliefs as we do, there are bound to be people who will naturally disagree with these movements regardless of how well-informed or familiar they are with them. For example, despite the fact that I feel I am able to maintain my open-mindedness, I believe that homosexuality is not morally right. I will discuss later on how I am able to maintain my own beliefs without becoming intolerant of my fellow man. My point with this example is merely that regardless of exposure or education, people will still disagree on issues of morality, so the idea of immersion being the best way to achieve open-mindedness is ludicrous.

The second popular ideology behind open-minded, and closely related to its cousin tolerance, falls within the camp that chooses to just ignore those that are different. This is a popular choice among younger generations of Christians (and followers of other religions too) who have a desire to not be branded as bigoted while still being able to maintain their personal beliefs. This idea of ignoring those different from oneself is fundamentally flawed by the fact that one cannot open their mind, when they put up complete barriers to even acknowledging entire segments of the population. It’s like saying that I am an expert on types of cereals, even though I only eat Frosted Flakes just because I don’t think about the other varieties of cereal. It’s clear that there are other types of cereals to be considered, just as it is clear that there are a whole world of people different from me who all play important roles in my world.

The solution to this issue, I believe, is incredibly simple if you actually think critically about what open-mindedness is. Open-mindedness isn’t characterized by embracing everybody’s culture and lifestyle choices at the expense of our own. Equally so, it is can not be characterized by isolating ourselves from our fellow humans beings when it is convenient. Open-mindedness is a simple concept, the idea of not prejudging others. It isn’t a problem isolated to groups who like to tout themselves as discriminated against such as homosexuals and racial minorities. No. It is a problem that extends to every facet of every subculture on the planet. Prejudgment is exactly the same when someone characterized as a blue-collar is immediately considered to be stupid as it is when a homosexual is unfairly characterized as an in your face pervert. The only way that anyone can be truly open-minded is to view people based on who they are, without applying predetermined critiques to them.

This isn’t a political issue at all. Republicans and Democrats are guilty of this alike, as are all political movements that seek to polarize the population into groups. If we hope to ever live in harmony with our fellow man we must learn to respect, not stereotype, our neighbors regardless of their race or lifestyle.