It's Easier to Believe

One of my favorite sayings is, "It's easier to believe than to know."

What I mean is that anyone can believe anything about everything. Belief requires nothing but belief.

On the other hand, to know something requires effort. The effort to challenge your belief. The effort to seek and assimilate knowledge outside of yourself. The effort to educate yourself in an area in which you are ignorant (meaning that you do not know).

The effort is all the difference.

Are you willing to make it?

It's nice to have the courage of your convictions; but it's harder and more rewarding to have the courage to challenge your convictions.

Make the effort to know. You'll find rewards you never expected. 

Visit www.factcheck.org and www.wikipedia.org because knowledge is at your fingertips.

Ignorance is Optional

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

Believe it or not, ignorance is optional. We control whether we have the knowledge to be fully functioning human beings. This includes the fundamentals of science, technology, history (and biography), government, politics, and spirituality (and ethics), and the arts. The more we know about the things we need to know, the easier and more fulfilling our lives will be.

But what is ignorance? I think that there are five factors which encompass ignorance, and which lead to a painful and diminished life.

First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who's in charge.

Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events.

Third, is wooden-headedness: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts.

Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country's long-term interests.

Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

Why does this matter? It matters because mistakes are the products of ignorance. It matters because ignorance limits our options for solving our problems.

One of the first steps that we Americans can do to move from ignorance to knowledge is to become familiar with our Constitution. You can learn more here and here.

Learn -- because you have an option.

The Buddha on Teaching

The Buddha said to Ananda: "Truly, Ananda, it's not easy to teach the way of freedom to others. In teaching freedom to others, the best way is to first establish five things and then teach. What are the five? When you teach others, you must think:
'I will teach in a gradual and sensitive way.
I will speak with the goal in mind.
I will speak with gentleness.
I will not speak in order to gain anything.
I will not speak with a view to harming anyone.'

"If you establish these five things, your teaching will be well received."

-Anguttara Nikaya