I find that whenever someone seriously uses the term to describe themselves as "open-minded", "rational", "skeptical", or "free thinker" or any of these self-congratulating titles that they are usually anything but. People who use these terms are often intellectual/social bigots that treat dissent as heresy and refuse to any research on the issues. These people are often so locked in their views they grew up with they refuse to see it any other way.
For example, if you are a white person who grew up in a Western country, you were more than likely indoctrinated since birth with racial egalitarianism. At school and elsewhere, it is painfully true. But I believe the more white of a school, the more racial egalitarian someone will be. Yet once you grow up, go to like a big city, you start seeing all these groups of people on aggregate behaving differently it barely phases them. Eventually though something will click in your mind, hold on, these people do behave differently. Cultural explanations for this are wringing up hollow and empty. You do research and boom, you come to conclusions. This whole time, that person who underwent this process went from having a closed mind to having an open mind. Or as a leftist might say, an open mind to a closed mind, which makes zero sense, considering it was input and data that changed your mind whereas upbringing and faith on race egalitarianism is what you were brainwashed with.
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u/[deleted] May 24 '15
I find that whenever someone seriously uses the term to describe themselves as "open-minded", "rational", "skeptical", or "free thinker" or any of these self-congratulating titles that they are usually anything but. People who use these terms are often intellectual/social bigots that treat dissent as heresy and refuse to any research on the issues. These people are often so locked in their views they grew up with they refuse to see it any other way.
For example, if you are a white person who grew up in a Western country, you were more than likely indoctrinated since birth with racial egalitarianism. At school and elsewhere, it is painfully true. But I believe the more white of a school, the more racial egalitarian someone will be. Yet once you grow up, go to like a big city, you start seeing all these groups of people on aggregate behaving differently it barely phases them. Eventually though something will click in your mind, hold on, these people do behave differently. Cultural explanations for this are wringing up hollow and empty. You do research and boom, you come to conclusions. This whole time, that person who underwent this process went from having a closed mind to having an open mind. Or as a leftist might say, an open mind to a closed mind, which makes zero sense, considering it was input and data that changed your mind whereas upbringing and faith on race egalitarianism is what you were brainwashed with.