Infinite Memory

So, I was sitting here reading the internet (it’s a great book, love the protagonist BTW) and I got to thinking, why do people always defend everything they say and do even when they know it is wrong. (How I got here is a convoluted story.)
So here is my slightly thought out answer: 'Because no one ever forgets'. This is especially true in the age of the internet. So here is my thought, basically we expect (as a people) that our politicians and neighbors to always do the right thing and never be wrong and to always have been that way. Think of a person you know who has made a mistake say he was arrested for drug possession, now do you think any different about him than you would have if didn’t know that he had a prior drug conviction? The answer is usually yes. As a people we refuse to acknowledge that people make mistakes and, by extension, are not always right. Additionally we have this idea that people also don't change and always think or feel the same thing (usually especially if it is contrary to what we think or believe). This is readily apparent during any election cycle. Someone always brings up that their opponent said or did something more than 10 years ago and that is reason to prevent them from being elected. Come one, everyone experiments with liberalism in college, it is just what people do.

Does this make sense, to act this way as a people? No is the correct answer. People change. A lot of people change their minds about things. Not all of this is because we are stupid or whimsical, partially it is new information is collected and our root beliefs then evolve. For instance for many years I was adamantly against gay marriage. I was basically told in church that it was wrong and never questioned it (I had no other data points to consider). So years later I have gay friends of which two of them are married. During the intervening years I realized that 1) I didn't know as much about the topic as I thought I did, 2) learned a lot more about the issues surrounding marriage and companionship in America, 3) discovered that I was a lot more libertarian, and 4) therefore I realized that I was for all civil unions and for the unregulation by the government of 'marriage'. I was trying to tell people (or believe I should tell people) how to live their lives having never been in their shoes. (There is a much longer conversation there for another time.) So if you had loaded up youtube.com and found a video of me from 10 years ago you would never think that I could be for civil marriages between same sex partners. However I now am. If I was to run for election (as a democrat or a republican) this fact could be used against me. Is this fair? Truthful? Accurate? Intelligent?

So what does this mean? If you can never admit you change your mind because you will be called out on what you used to believe then it makes sense (whether you want to or not) to defend that statement to hold up people's opinion of you. I view this as a huge problem in our day and age. I think it is extremely naive to believe that people don't change their mind, or can't be stupid or ill-informed once in a while. If we were a little more understanding of the mistakes people made then maybe we could have more intelligent discourse. Maybe we could have real debates (debates are not people getting up and saying what they think, it is actually two people discussing a topic and both being open-minded enough to admit they may have been wrong in one aspect or another). It seems like as long as we expect everyone to have always been perfect we will continue to have misunderstandings and fights over things that are irrelevant. I am fairly convinced that most people (if we were to get away from this idea) would actually stop defending old ideas or insisting they are correct if people didn’t expect that you must never be wrong to be a ‘good/smart’ person.

I honestly am proud of the fact that I can revaluate my thoughts and opinions when new information comes along and say, 'you know, I may have been wrong.' Let's all try to be a little more accepting of people and not reminding them of the bad choices they make. Maybe tomorrow can be a little nicer that way and more intelligent discourse can be had by all.