Avoiding the Ignorant Age

The human race has passed through the history books as described by ages: the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and now the Information Age. Why now must our culture insist on beginning the Ignorant Age?

With all of the advances our species has made throughout recorded history, it continues to amaze me how people can be as closed-minded now as they were milennia ago. Religious zealots murdering; gay rights passing and being abolished nationwide; doctrine and dogma refilling the gaps that explorers, thinkers, and scientists proved skewed centuries ago. The world has always been ripe for conflict, yet it feels to me like our circular ways of solving problems and gaining knowledge always stalls as each new age dawns and the last diminishes. In this writer's opinion, the importance of developing and for some continuing, to have open-minded views of life and its setbacks will be the saving grace for the human ways of life as the next age begins.

Why is this so? Why is being a free thinker important for our future? After all, everyone's opinion is different. That is the beauty of seeking knowledge and truth and our country grants us liberties to expresses opinion pieces such as this one. What are people so afraid of? Why can't devout religious followers embrace the fact that other theological views exist without adding negative criticisms to their published interviews and teachings? Why can scientists not respect the wishes of organizations that vouch for safer tests and continue to offend in the name of human understanding? This may sound a little to transcendental for some, but what happened to harmony?

If you are already an open-minded individual, please continue to be one. Realize, however, this does not grant you omnipotent potentials to be a level above those who refuse to think as you do. Nor do such views of life grant you the moral right to undermine those who are strict and straitlaced in their beliefs, customs, and personal practices. As a tangent, narrow thinkers and doers who find solace in scrutinizing the neutral percent of the population who would rather ask the serious questions then stick to the written black and white of doctrine, know that times change. Know that to advance our culture, you must advance your abilities to see as others see, regardless of contradictions or misinterpretations.

We all have our values, ethics, and standards that we hold dear. Yet we are also, all of us, capable of listening to every view of an argument from every different vantage. "Food for thought" seems to have left people in today's society searching for answers to hunger on, and most starve instead of indulging themselves in the views and expressions of our nation's melting pot. Please, the open-minded and the tunnel-vision-viewing populace - stop arguing and passing blame and begin to work together. Running the same circles man carved centuries ago does not solve problems: sharpen your senses to the views around you. You don't have to change your own views or lives. You do not even have to enjoy the perceptions of others. Simply listen and learn.