The blindness of open mindedness

When I speak of openmindedness in this note it is in reference to how many people believe it to be today culturally. To have an open mind means to be willing to consider or receive new and different ideas. It means being flexible and adaptive to new experiences and ideas. Openmindedness for me is much different than what most of society may view it. I asked my friend Alicia what openmindedness truely entails and she stated and reaffirmed many of the statements I made previously about openmindedness in regards to its cultural view of it. She said that it is a willingness to be open to new possibilities; it is the openness to admit that you can be wrong to in your knowledge whether it be spiritual, physical, or emotional. Openminded people are more proficient to adapt to change, to philosophy, religion, and etc.
 
Many say that minds are like parachutes and only function when open. Openmindedness is a common topic amongst many people my age; one must be open to new religions, new philosophies, new drugs, new cars, new cell phones, new cultures, new gods, new fashions, new foods to eat, new foods to not eat, and etc. Today if you have an open mind you are to be consider a wise person;  many people believe that if you are not open minded then you leave yourself vulnerable and limited to the knowledge that you may come to know spiritually and intellectually. One must seek to be openminded for better equipping oneself for expansion of intellectual capability, problem solving, and spiritual development.


 


     People who are open Minded:

• Are more accepting of others and have fewer prejudices
• Are more optimistic and make the most of life
• Have less stress because they are more open to change
• Have better problem solving skills 
• Want to learn more, therefore are more interesting

It's "generally" acknowledged that open-mindedness is a virtue. But there is some confusion as to what it actually involves. Too often, people confuse open-mindedness with indecisiveness. They think that open-mindedness requires that one abstains from drawing conclusions. The trait of open-mindedness is best understood as a disposition, rather than an occurrent state of mind. It's not about what beliefs you actually have, but how open you are to revising them in appropriate circumstances. It requires the true humility of self-acknowledged fallibility. It requires that our minds be open to new evidence. This is something very different from suggesting that we should be equally accepting of nonsense as we are of sense. That's not open-mindedness; it's gullibility, or perhaps stupidity.


The virtuously open mind is not wide open, indiscriminately accepting of any and all viewpoints. Rationality must remain as a filter or else you will leave yourself open to ignorant concepts. We should be open to accepting good reasons of which we are currently unaware, but this doesn't require us to take recognizably bad reasons seriously. Open-mindedness means that we will acknowledge the possibility that new evidence could in future lead us to change our mind. But it doesn't preclude our drawing reasonable conclusions in the present. As far as I am concerned, one may have a virtuous and open mind, yet still see the self-evident truths of the gospel.

Those who say that they have an open mind and are not open to Christianity, are you really open minded? Are you willing to say that you do not have it all figured out? I thought I had it all figured out at one point. The gospel does a great job for me in humility; it always points to Christ, leading me to be more God-centered than self-centered. If you consider yourself to be an open minded individual, but have not been open to the Bible then I would like to encourage you to read the gospel of John in the Bible. It is our option to whether or not we choose to claim open mindedness.