Wednesday, July 11, 2007

I could be wrong

I could be wrong.

We live in a time when a lot of things are happening. There is a technological revolution going on, a cheapening of the costs of international transactions, a time of flux in international relations. Upheavals inspire uncertainty, uncertainty inspires fear and concern, and sometimes fear and concern lead to shrilly asserted certainties.

Me, I don't buy into the trope of perfect understanding. I think it was Plato who wrote that perfection exists only in the mind of God. (I could be wrong on that quote attribution!) Man is, by his nature, flawed, fallen and fallible. As a Christian, I like to think that being "3F" is bad, but being "4F" is good, and that the fourth f is "forgiven."

My goal here is simply to try and think a little about what I see going on in the world, and to try to apply my reason to what I see. My reasoning capacity is shaped by a myriad of factors: the experiences I've undergone, the readings I have done, the world-view I have formed, the time and the place and (yes, Margaret) the class I belong to. I am, in no particular order, a Christian, husband, father, former Marine, semi-reformed lawyer, Texan, American, and a child who first popped onto the scene in 1966. All of those things have shaped who I am, and thus how I view the world.

Everyone tries to apply their understandings to the world. I am not so vain as to suppose that, in the instance of a disagreement, I must be right, and those who disagree with me must be wrong. It is tempting, and seductive, to assume that how I see the world is how the world really is.

But I could be wrong.

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