Tuesday, April 5, 2011

How Ideology Ruins Lives

One of the best posts I have read this year - by Alex Knap (checkout the heartbreaking story - How Ayn Rand Ruined A Childhood):

"Human beings are not omniscient, nor are they identical. Two people who experience the same event may walk away with a completely different meaning and story about what happened. We all walk through life carrying with us memories, ideas, and experience, and so it’s inevitable that we will disagree with one another. That we will have radically different notions of life from one another.

But to reject a person because they have different ideas is the worst kind of pride. To allow your ideology to prevent you from sharing your life with another person seems abhorrent to me. People are wonderful. Different ideas are wonderful. Different thoughts, feelings, and stories are wonderful.

To miss out on all that because it doesn’t fit in with the story you tell yourself is a tragic waste of life — a missed opportunity to experience true communion with other people. It’s a one-way ticket to a lonely, bitter old age.

I think that it’s important to work out the meaning in your own life. I think it’s vital to develop a philosophy for yourself. But it’s equally important to realize that you are not that philosophy. You are not that meaning. Philosophy; meanings — they’re just ideas. You have to embrace that in your life, your ideas will change. You will think differently about things as you experience new people, new places, new books, etc. But those changes in ideas don’t change
who you are. Remembering that is, I think, vital for a happy life."

No comments: