Something I found on the Internet…what do you think??? Being a Newbie here, is it fine to have posts about articles?

Open Minded...or Mindless?
Being open minded is usually associated with good things - like being fair, unbiased, receptive, amenable, tolerant, etc. All good qualities when used judiciously. Open-mindedness can, however, also be a negative trait. Allow me to present what the politically correct movement doesn't want you to know.
Open-mindedness can be synonymous with cowardice and an inability or unwillingness to form an opinion and/or stand up for what you believe. This can be equally as useless and destructive to the fabric of society as being maliciously opinionated. It enables dependence and creates apathy and passivity.
Using an extreme example for emphasis sake, while listening to a talk radio program I heard a caller defend a convicted multiple murderer. The murderer had killed an entire family of four in their own home. He didn't know them, they were just in his way.
The caller was hypothesizing what childhood trauma may have caused him to commit this heinous act. She explained how society was to blame. She wondered how 'we' could pass judgment on him (even though he confessed to the crime after he was caught). This is open-mindedness to the extreme, and she was oh so politically correct.
…
For full article: http://www.boogiejack.com/goodies_008.html

quote:

Originally posted by ampmaster:

it's vital that justice is impartial. That it is above the trivalties of humanity. When a person breaks the social contracts which hold us together (which we call laws) he must be punished for breaking that contract (like if you break a marital contract you may end up paying a lot of money to the spouse you are breaking contract with) Humanization of justice could jepordize that, Simply because humans are suckers for a sob story. You tell a sad enough story you could get off lightly for just about any crime or just be sent to the mental hospital where you can be "cured" and back on the streets in as little as three weeks. Impartial Justice is the backbone of society as we know it all people from kings to vagabonds (with true impartial justice) recieve the same punishment for shop lifting with no thought given to postion, income, creed or color. All that matters is that you have violated a contract and according to the severity of that contract you shall be duly punished

I don't think it's possible for justice to be completely impartial. While we can fight the "humanization of justice" - your definition of such, at least - to the death (hopefully philosophically rather than physically), which I strongly encourage, to truly defeat all partiality in our legal system, we'd have to dig to the very root: the laws themselves, "the contract" of which you speak, which are almost unfailingly biased. As Holliewood stated, the universe did not come pre-packaged with a list of definite, absolute, unquestionable rights and wrongs; humans - society - created them, and have heavily debated them since our brain capacity allowed for such interactions. Our laws are based on the customs and traditions that society currently deems acceptable, and while you can uphold them and defend them with an unflinching iron fist all you want, the entire basis of the justice system is still skewed. Justice humanizers are simply exploiting an already flawed institution.

We have honed and molded our consitution into the picturesque dreamland of our forefathers' vision of a perfect society (to a vague extent), which has its many virtues and faults, as society has learned over the past few centuries and thus adjusted and attempted to rectify, often with favorable results, sometimes achieving naught but a slew of new issues to resolve. Either way, humanity as a whole is progressing, and, because the legal system has room for change, justice and our understanding of it have been able to grow along with us. But laws themselves have experienced so many changes and revisions that, over the course of our nation's history, their entire purpose has become somewhat distorted. People are constantly warring over who has the higher right in any given situation, and the final decision is reached by similar though slightly less vocal people, people who still have ideas and opinions and homes with food on the table and families that are hungry and eagerly awaiting their arrival home from work. Even if you programmed a seemingly unbiased computer to establish justice, it was still wired by human hands.

Basically, no matter how you slice it, justice is a human invention and thus will forever be partial. It cannot rise above man's trivialities because it lives and breathes them. I do agree, however, that the laws we already have, damaged (for lack of a better word) as they are, should be upheld, protected, and prized until society sees them as unsuitable for the current day and age. They are not absolute truths; they are subject to change and should be scrutinized - and, if need be, reconsidered (basically, treated with an open mind). And as long as the laws are subject to change, it's impossible for the manner in which they are upheld to remain constant. Impartiality is not vital, merely favorable.

Sorry for rambling and veering slightly off topic; insomnia has settled in and most of the synapses have taken the evening off.

Circling back to the original question, I see an open mind as one willing and able to form an opinion after considering several perspectives, defend that opinion, and accept defeat (though still be wary of its causes) if proven incorrect. The inability to form an opinion does not automatically signify open-mindedness. You can still fight for and believe in your opinions and be fully aware of their fallibity. It would be unwise not to.

i see the opposite of open-mindness as discrimination. as long as that open mindness isn't to the extreme that you don't have your own opinions i would much have openmindness in the world than discrimination.

Not exactly you have a contract through the citizens/subjects your connected to (i.e. your parents) and when you become an adult and a citizen/subject you sign that contract (sometimes figurtivly, sometimes literally) yourself.

quote:

that contract

Does that mean that if you are born into a society you immidiatly make a contract with the society concerned?

I did not catch the referance as I have no idea what that piece of literature is so no foul.

To awnser your question,

it's vital that justice is impartial. That it is above the trivalties of humanity. When a person breaks the social contracts which hold us together (which we call laws) he must be punished for breaking that contract (like if you break a marital contract you may end up paying a lot of money to the spouse you are breaking contract with) Humanization of justice could jepordize that, Simply because humans are suckers for a sob story. You tell a sad enough story you could get off lightly for just about any crime or just be sent to the mental hospital where you can be "cured" and back on the streets in as little as three weeks. Impartial Justice is the backbone of society as we know it all people from kings to vagabonds (with true impartial justice) recieve the same punishment for shop lifting with no thought given to postion, income, creed or color. All that matters is that you have violated a contract and according to the severity of that contract you shall be duly punished

Sorry amp, unnecessarily harsh. Bad day.

quote:

Justice is deaf to sob stories and blind to poor excuses

Is that necessarily a good thing amp? Or did you look it up in the Malleus Maleficarum?

I see severe open mindedness to be what the qoute "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything" was warning against.

What I think we should do is learn as much as we can then form an opinion cast in iron

And as to the childhood trauma (highly unlikely to start) of this muderer even if his mommy beat him and his old man raped him as a kid that doesn't change what crimes he has comitted. It doesn't matter why you did something illegal all that matters is that you did it, you got caught and now you need to take responsability for those acts and face justice. Justice is deaf to sob stories and blind to poor excuses all that matters is punishment for crimes commited

I agree with clpo13...to an extent. Open-mindedness can be a good thing, but from the other perspective can also become extreme. It is when you realize that everything you were taught and everything that you currently understand now may not actually be true. You start to question all you know (or think you know )

But again, Anya, that article has a very valid point. My freshman year in college, I took a philosophy class where we learned about relativism. This kinda reminds me of that. We discussed how there might not actually be a right and a wrong. Depending on where you grew up, what you learned, etc ... some things may be completley unacceptable in one culture and completely normal in another. An extreme example for you is murder, yes murder. In headhunting societies it is a perfectly normal thing for someone to chop a random person's head off, thus killing them, not based on something that person did or did not do, but simply b/c they needed to chop a head off. It sounds crazy to us and utterly wrong, but who is to say what is right? Who can be the ultimate judge on that? ....anyway, that is a little bit about relativism. Once we cut away our boundaries of what we think we should or should not do though, anything could happen.

Open-mindedness is less of sitting on the fence and more of forming an opinion with the knowledge that it might be flawed. For instance, I'm open-minded on the idea of religion. I'm anything but religious, but I keep the door open. After all, I really don't know any more than the next person about God or the afterlife. It could very well be that my beliefs are wrong. If I'm ever shown that's the case, I'll change my beliefs to fit the new information. That's being open-minded, as opposed to being closed-minded, where you refuse to accept any possibility as true other than what you believe.