Quote of the Week...from Henry David Thoreau

The universe is wider than our views of it.                 ---Henry David Thoreau.

Henry David Thoreau was a nineteenth century American writer famous for authoring Walden.  He's also known for a number of quotes...the one at the head of this article resonated with me. In essence, he's saying here that as humans we tend to oversimplify reality, and even our greatest scientific accomplishments are only abstractions at best.  But also, many of us fall prey to worldviews and ideologies that order the universe...especially that regarding society and its institutions...according to a set number of rules we often confuse with objective truth without recognizing their limitations.  Take, for example, radio talk show host Mark Levin, someone I've grown accustomed to listening to on weeknights.  He calls himself a "constitutional conservative" and has written a number of books espousing his ideology.  But Levin, while entertaining and independent-minded, has a rigidity to his political philosophy...should a caller to his show define conservatism...even favorably...in any terms other than Levin's own "definition", he'll fly off the handle and begin to angrily berate them...often suggesting that they have no right to their opinion since they haven't read his books...

Or take this nominee for the United States Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch.  He has his own system for deciding cases on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  In exploring how a specific law applies to the plaintiff and defendant in a particular case, he makes no effort to explore the underlying intent that the lawmakers had in designing and passing it, instead just taking the text on its own terms...and then using his Oxford English dictionary to read the definitions of different words in the written law that best suit him.  This has resulted in some strange past rulings of his that have come out in the Senate confirmation hearings lately...including one that the current Supreme Court just unanimously overturned...

Look, we have to make some order and sense out of the chaotic universe that surrounds us...we would otherwise be unable to function.  But let's not get carried away with ourselves and instead recognize our own man-made rules and explanations for what they are: merely tools and not reality itself.  And if someone else has a different way of interpreting things, it's O.K. to respect them for that while remaining secure in our own outlook.  On the other hand, if you're a federal judge with the enormous responsibility that job has regarding others' lives, then the people appearing before you depend on you seeing their case from more than one self-imposed, narrow perspective...