Part of me has always been an old-fashioned intellectual. Pop culture only infiltrated me as much as a high regard for grunge and alternative rock, with which I could indulge my feelings of angst against an opaque societal vision. Classic literature has always been my favorite read, and I have little appreciation for authors that print a book, or more, a year. This ability to churn out books seems so shallow. Perhaps I am just fantasizing about an author belaboring over word choice and subtleties in the plot. But I think it is deeper than that. Authors that have taken a lifetime to author great works, only to be recognized after their death, had some hesitation to unveil their work to outside eyes. Maybe they acknowledged the complexity of life and the seeming insipid simplicity of people, and were afraid that their work couldn't capture all they knew about the world and how they related to it. They didn't argue for a one-dimensional perception of the world, and perhaps they felt that their work did just that, and so it went unpublished. I'm pointing this out, because I think now is the first time I ever really understood this.
College blew a lot of my hard-lined thought processes out of the window, but it made me realize that going to far in either direction can be dangerous. Encouraging polar beliefs, discourages analytical thought. Instead of creating banners to incite aggression or alienation, we should be creating banners that encourage research and intellectual honesty. Then whatever you come to, is your own personal belief. It doesn't fit in a box, it shouldn't. Coming to a conclusion about something is finite. People make it finite, but making a conclusion finite cuts us off to what the other people have learned, discovered, and feel. That is why it is so important to be open. Be open, but be rational about it. Question change, question being stagnant.
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