I have lately had the happy misfortune of picking up a book that contains ideas that stir the soul. It has rekindled the embers of ideas that have been long banked. It is a feast for the mind, but is a banquet that I enjoy even more when I do not eat alone.
I am grateful for family and close friends who are hungry for deep discussion, but I would love to invite others to the table. Fresh philosophies bring a sweet savor, like a mysterious spice from a foreign land. Sadly, few are those who hunger for a repast of challenging ideas. The world is largely content to gorge itself on the fast food of sound bites and shallow solutions to complex problems.
“Curiosity” has been crushed by “certainty.” The hollow drive to “win” trumps the thirst to “grow.” The empty desire to be “right” drowns out the bottomless well of “truth.”
This isn’t a new phenomenon.
Benjamin Franklin writes in his autobiography —
I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat everyone of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure.
For, if you would inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention.
…
If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix’d in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.
Yet there is no end to people who live by a positive, assuming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and defeats every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us.
And so I hesitate to open my dining room to guests.