Disabuse Yourself

1. I am m not a racist
2. I was born and raised into a mildly racist society, where your city of origin matters a lot in your daily life 

Therefore 


3. I must possess a certain capacity to resist the influence of racist ideology surrounding me during my upbringing
4. If I were born into an extremely overpowering or convincing racist society, potent beyond my capacity to resist, I would have succumbed to racism

Therefore 


5. Under a plausible set of circumstances, it is possible that I would have ended up with radically different beliefs
6. Those beliefs would still be wrong for me to hold in principle - regardless of the justification for how I ended up having them
7. But even though I would be wrong, I would still think that I am right, perhaps with the same conviction that I hold today for my current 'right' beliefs

Therefore 


8. Under a plausible set of circumstances, someone like me could end up with wrong beliefs and not have a way to tell that they are wrong
9. By reflection, it is possible that I today hold wrong beliefs just because I happen to have been subjected to a particularly bad set of circumstances
10. In that case things would still look clearly black and white from my perspective, and I won't have a way to tell that I am wrong

✼ ✼ ✼ ✼ ✼ ✼

And this is the answer to your question as to why I keep reading books for people whom I don't respect.

It is also the answer to your question as to why, once in a while, I tune the radio to some weird radical talk show or another.

This is the answer to why I read Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, and why I'd love to get my hands on the Al Qaeda Manual.

And it is also the answer to why I keep moving around - From city to city, from world to world.

I have to keep shaking my surrounding circumstances, challenging my own ground truths. Only then can I know right from wrong: as I shake and shake myself, what beliefs stick are right, not right BECAUSE OF circumstances, but right IN SPITE OF circumstances. Universally right, therefore truly right. All false beliefs fall off :)

The more I travel, the more I expose myself to different people and different cultures and cities and languages and books and lectures and mindsets and lifestyles, the more confident I grow about whatever beliefs I remain faithful to…. such is my journey, not from world to world, but from truth to truth.

And it works - Over time I rid myself of so many sticky wrongs. Whenever that happens, it feels so liberating, so wonderful.

So when was the last time you disabused yourself??