{"id":20055,"date":"2020-10-22T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20055"},"modified":"2020-10-22T10:11:21","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T17:11:21","slug":"the-examined-life-choose-your-convictions-carefully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/10\/22\/the-examined-life-choose-your-convictions-carefully\/","title":{"rendered":"The Examined Life<\/em>: Choose your convictions carefully"},"content":{"rendered":"

Words are delicate, but they also have power. You must be careful about how you define words and which words you use. One misplaced word and your meaning can be misconstrued. For that reason, I want to make a distinction between beliefs and opinions, and convictions. Beliefs and opinions are similar in that they don\u2019t have weight. You can have strong opinions, you can have weak beliefs, and vice versa, but on their own they are weightless. Convictions, on the other hand, are by default and definition strong beliefs or opinions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Examined Life<\/em> is a column appearing in every issue of Nexus<\/em> (photo by Ethan Badr\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I think people have too many convictions. Or that people think about beliefs and opinions as convictions. And I don\u2019t really know who I mean by \u201cpeople.\u201d It\u2019s not like I did a survey. This is just my own observations of some people in the world. But we\u2019ll get back to them; lets talk about me.<\/p>\n

When I go into a discussion, I have certain views, but if confronted with enough contrary evidence, my mind can be changed. If, however, after many conversations there is insufficient evidence to change my mind, then those views should become stronger and stronger, eventually becoming convictions. And, obviously, I\u2019m not thinking to myself, \u201cAh, yes, let\u2019s move another one of those opinions down into the convictions bucket.\u201d No, these are subtle unconscious changes in belief. My theory is that some people dump all their views straight into the convictions bucket. Zero or 100, with nothing in between. The trouble is that strong opinions and beliefs become personal, and when personal feelings are involved, discussions can turn into arguments very quickly. The goal of an argument, unlike a discussion, isn\u2019t to learn, it\u2019s to win. And nobody likes to lose.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to be wrong. It\u2019s even harder to admit defeat. Doing both at the same time can seem almost impossible. We need to make discussion a safe place where there are no winners or losers, where everyone knows it\u2019s okay to be wrong. For that to be possible, people need to have fewer convictions. It\u2019s good to have some, but too many creates a wall. We all need to leave room to have our minds changed\u2014not about everything, but at least about some things.<\/p>\n

And you know, that\u2019s just my opinion. Maybe I\u2019m wrong, but you\u2019ll have to prove that to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Words are delicate, but they also have power. You must be careful about how you define words and which words you use. One misplaced word and your meaning can be misconstrued. For that reason, I want to make a distinction between beliefs and opinions, and convictions. Beliefs and opinions are similar in that they don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20056,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055\/revisions\/20056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}