This is something I’ve struggled with the past couple of years. I believe in standing up for your convictions, especially when confronting ignorance, but I’ve mellowed out lately. I used to get into long heated debates about everything from the war to the environment, but I think lately I’ve started to really question the usefulness of these debates. Will the other person ever see my point of view? Am I doing more to alienate the other person than to communicate with them? Am I just yelling into the dark?

There’s this proverb from the book The Alchemist, where a wise man tells a group of people that if they already know what he’s going to say he doesn’t need to tell it to them, and if they don’t know, then he still doesn’t need to tell it to them because they wouldn’t understand.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I still believe in standing up for what I believe in, but I think there’s more effective means of doing it than just getting into a cat’s game of never ending debate.