Your Opinion

I like researching issues to develop an opinion. While everyone has a right to their opinion I find that some opinions are more educated than others. I publish things that I believe may encourage people to research issues further and develop their own educated opinions.

Maybe the reason “you” are having an issue publishing is that you don't believe “your” opinion can be useful.

There are a lot of people who will try and make people who have opinions that differ from theirs feel as if they don't matter. I find teachers typically fall into this category,particularly f you ask "to many questions" or if they interpret questions as an attack on their authority.

When I was in school I used to keep trying things over and over again that others claimed were impossible. If a teacher said something that disagreed with something else I had read I questioned them and then researched the issue. This made me a target for a lot of teachers and a lot of kids. People called me stupid for saying things like “Einstein was wrong” or “The US will probably end up becoming friends with Russia” or “Sea level is not the same all over the world, look at Panama”.

I still question everything people say and because my teachers in elementary school taught a lot of incorrect things in, history, politics, economics, science, and other things I have learned not to ever trust what any one person tells me. Sometimes I don't trust what “everyone” tells me is correct like Einstein or Evolution. Theories especially, I do my own research on theories.

When I was in high school a teacher was trying to explain relativity. I said, “so the sun orbits the earth, relativity speaking” which it does. In Einstein's book he described relativity using trains, a person on the train is not moving relative to the train and the ground outside is moving relative to the train. Taking Einstein's example we can replace the train with the Earth and suddenly the Earth is not moving it is the sun that moves. Now Aristotle is not a moron, just someone who understood relative motion even if he could not properly describe it. The teacher became angry with me and told me I was an idiot because I didn't understand that the Earth only revolved around the sun. Obviously the teacher was incapable of understanding the implications of Einstein's relativity and couldn't teach something they couldn't understand.

Now most people would have been embarrassed and I am sure most of my classmates don't remember my specific comments like this, they only remember I was an idiot who argued with the teacher.

I was ecstatic because once a teacher results to ridicule or insults I know I am right and the teacher is wrong and just trying to save their own ignorant butt. I also know most people are too afraid of their peers to rock the boat and even those kids that did agree with me would never admit it because they would be thought to be an idiot.

Teachers are basically well intentioned ignorant people afraid to admit or display their own ignorance. In other words they are no smarter or better educated than you are on most subjects. In fact, because teachers study teaching instead of things like history, math and science you may know much, much more about these subjects than any teacher.

I can count on one hand the times a teacher agreed with me against a class full of kids because teachers operate in a “peer pressure” environment and even when they know they are wrong they are going to change the subject or “attack” the “trouble maker”.

Teachers, parents and other system officials are doing everything they can to train people to submit to authority rather than educate them in how to think and question authority.

Personally I learn from almost everyone, even the stupid teachers who withheld their approval and gave me crappy grades because they thought I wanted the approval.

Not exactly, although like most people I enjoy praise. I would rather learn something than be approved of. I would rather help others learn than be approved of.

Sometimes your track record is more important that approval. If you don't blow your own horn someone else will use it as a spittoon. On the other hand people hate feeling stupid even when they obviously are and they feel even dumber when you keep doing things that they can't or couldn't do.

People will often ignore what is correct for what s popular, just as kids and teachers do in school and our educational system indoctrinates people into this ridiculous idiocy.

Once you understand how stupid and ignorant people can be two things should occur to you.

The first is that you are no better and no worse than any one else. Your opinion is just as important as Einstein's and just as worthless as Charles Manson's.

The second is that the only way to evolve intellectually is to constantly question and discuss even “laws” like gravity or the conservation of energy.

The third thing to remember is that people who laugh at you for questioning things they take for granted, things “everyone knows”, are just brain washed idiots whose ability to think is so compromised that they cannot understand their own ignorance. You should feel sorry for them as you remember that their opinion, as ignorant and brain washed as it is, can be useful.

How can the words of an obviously compromised idiot be useful? The wise man learns even from the child. “From the mouths of babes” is an old saying that is always worth remembering. Sure, they are ignorant morons, but, since “you” (or me or anyone) can not possibly know everything the person “you” are talking to knows things that “you” don't and those things can be useful to “you”.

So if you are an intelligent person on a quest for knowledge and understanding or just a moron blowing off steam your opinions are useful whoever you are.

Sure, the morons who think they know everything will claim you bring nothing to the table. You obviously know things they don't know. The wise man will seek out that knowledge and the moron will ignore it.

The first thing a researcher does when examining an issue is review bibliographies of published works looking for the “expert” everyone else is referencing. Then the researcher reads what the expert has to say. The surface researcher trying for a basic grasp will stop here. The more thorough researcher will read almost everything published on the subject because even if a paper has never been referenced in another paper it can still be a useful and important paper filled with information the researcher can use. Or it can be a ridiculous rant with hardly a shred of information.

In the end, share your thoughts and ideas for wise people who know that even in the worst pages of moronic rant filled with propaganda and ignorance there are gems of knowledge, wisdom and understanding.

Sure, morons will attack you as being worthless when you share your opinion. Some people will open discussions with you and you can learn even more from each other. Others will ignore you.

If writing out your opinion does nothing else, it will accomplish two goals. It will encourage you to think and become a better person. It will allow others to learn from you.