Having deep conversations with people

It's a great pastime to share your thoughts with a group of people, to debate, to question your beliefs, and to argue them from many sides, but it often leaves me feeling sad.

Seeing that things aren't simple as they were when I was a child breaks my heart whenever I'm forced to deal with this stark reality.

It starts with realizing that all facts are filtered through the mind of whosoever saw them and reported them. All accounts of reality are only as strong as the degree of trust between people. Give someone a survey, and they could lie. Ask someone what happened and they could forget or exaggerate. Whatever we know could have been biased or false or tampered with. Most people who speak up about issues are the people who hold extreme viewpoints, and almost everything that's worth reading is biased in some way--it's probably impossible to say that something isn't biased in some way. But yet, we still pick up the newspaper or watch the news and believe it for the most part. We believe books we read because we believe in the system that prizes the truth. However, little things are so small that they could be fabricated. How many little things add to a large miscalculation?

From examining this, we find that there is no truth that can't be debated. One can always question the motives of someone else.

However, there is also our truth, our personal truth, what is correct for us, what we see as reality. Were we in love? There is no truly objective answer. Was it right? Are we right? My parents did this thing and so did everyone else I know. If I grew up in a culture where it was okay to hurt others, would I think it was right? People do things under the assumption that their beliefs are wholly true. So, how do you tell them they're wrong without doing it by force? And how do you know that you're right?

I'm a proponent of optimism and idealism. We need hope because only with hope can you proceed forward, and you need ideals to strive for, otherwise there is no direction.  But you can't forget the reality of the world you live in, you can't set policy solely on idealism. Instead, gradual changes must be made in the system to deal with our problems and grievances in better way.

The worst thing about discussion is that you can define the problem relatively simply, but generalizing about humankind is hard, and trying to say how something should be done is not the same as saying if people would agree and putting it into action. And what is the best way to go about something?

Sometimes I think it would be best if it was a dictatorship, but it would be run by someone with great morals, someone with a keen understanding of the world, someone who wasn't all one thing. But this person will never be the person everyone is okay with, and this person could change and become someone who isn't this person. One person can't know or do everything. And this person would be hated and love simultaneously.

But the thing is, you can't wait for the perfect system to arise. There needs to be some action for anything to happen. Redundant? Yes. But you'd be surprised at how little is done for fear of how naysayers will react.