View the world through your own lens, not one pre-crafted for you by talk radio or your friends or society
The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
I was just thinking this recently. I think PG was prompted to write this quick essay due to a recent poll on Hacker News regarding whether people were theists, deists or atheists. I think it was 3 to 1 atheists to theists.
When I was a teenager, I liked to watch documentaries about the New Left of the 60's. I considered myself liberal by all accounts. These days, I feel less like ascribing to a single worldview than ever before. It doesn't make sense to call yourself a liberal when all it means is rubber-stamping ideas on a panoply of vaguely related issues in current times.
Of course these days the proper word for liberal is progressive. But I'm not a progressive, nor am I conservative. I'm just me, and I'd like to think I can try to read and understand any given issue and not be clouded by a particular lens. PG is right. Labels are dumb. Think for yourself.
I'm not saying I don't see the world through a particular lens. But it's a fool who always uses a lens pre-crafted for them by talk radio (of either wing) or what it means to be conservative or liberal or theist or atheist. At least try to craft your own. Somehow, I think we'll be all better off.
