@dollarsandsense,

Wonderful insights, all. You know, for me, the simple engagement in an intelligent conversation is a reward in and of itself. To simply know that there are other intelligent minds out there thinking about an issue is comforting.

The reason I'm so against ideological thinking, of all kinds, is because it's so absolutist: "Either you're 100% with us ... or you're against us." No nuance is allowed. But life is complicated and rarely do complex problems have simple solutions ... for if they did, we wouldn't call them "complex problems."

I don't know about you, but I have disagreed about something with every single one of my best friends. When did philosophical disagreement become so toxic? Plato and Aristotle disagreed about almost everything. But they didn't hate each other ... they revered each other. They clearly understood that the one was making the other smarter.

How did we lose this?

Quill