Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.                                                    ---Isaac Asimov

Lately I have been rereading the late science fiction author Isaac Asimov's sequence of novels about robots, the Empire, and Foundation...I'm approaching the end with only a couple more Empire books to go through.  So it was natural to draw upon this prolific writer's thoughts for this week's quote...and it says a lot about human nature and how people adopt and tenaciously hold on to various narratives in their lives...

We're all subjective to a great extent, and those of us claiming otherwise are just fooling themselves.  The tendency for most people is to develop their own narratives of the way they believe (or want to believe) things are and to be intellectually dishonest about propping them up, first by assimilating any supportive information into the cherished narrative, be it personally experienced or from other sources...even sources that are not necessarily reliable, and second, by rejecting and/or disregarding any input...no matter how obviously true...that would be contradictory.  Another problem with folks and their narratives is that they are generally predisposed to refusing to see things from the viewpoint of others outside their "bubble", often ostracizing them with pejoratives and imputing sinister motives or even questioning their mental health and/or intelligence.  Although my discussion is more general in nature, let's just focus for a moment on the national political situation between President Trump and the Democratic Party challengers for his office.  If you watched the debates recently you'd see different candidates steeped in their own narratives, with fairness and justice being primary themes for the Democrats.  Trump, on the other hand, emphasizes prosperity, security and liberty in his narrative...are the two approaches mutually incompatible?  I'd like to have my own TV show with guests passionately committed to their own narratives...and have them assigned to argue the opposite side with a panel of judges sitting on the sideline to assure that they don't stray from their respective assignments.  I have a feeling that there are quite a few people who would be completely incapable of undertaking such an exercise of open-mindedness. Yes, a little bit of empathy can go a long way to reconciling ourselves with each other as opposed to this epidemic of name-calling and demonization.  Sadly, Isaac Asimov's above quote is probably going to ring true as long as humans walk on this Earth...