A couple months ago while looking for books with my son and my wife I picked up a book from a book outlet. Now, I'm not exactly a reader. I've never had much of an attention span for recreational reading, so most of the reading I've done in the last 10 years have been strictly for educational purposes. It wasn't until I started having conversations with one of my Internet friends that I thought that I might be due time to start restimulating my mind after over almost a year of being out of school. So I picked up a couple books on subjects that I have actually become interested in these last couple of years.
The first book I have started reading is a book by Joseph L. Graves regarding the social construct that is "race" (
"The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America ") When I first got the book, I really had a hard time getting into it. It's not that I didn't enjoy reading it. That wasn't the issue. The issue is that it's hard to set aside time to just sit down and actually read, especially if you haven't done any recreational reading for any significant amount of time. Before, my casual and recreational reading happened on the toilet. Feel me on that?
As I'm reading this book, a lot of strong assertions are made. Some subjective, and some very objective and supported by statistics. But as we've learned, statistics can be skewed and deceiving. So statistical evidence isn't exactly as concrete as we once thought. I couldn't help but step back from the situation and think how skeptical I've become throughout the years. Right now, I'm reading a book and while I'm totally digging what I'm reading, I can't help but take a lot of what I'm reading with a grain of salt, statistically supported or not. It's a pretty far step from where I was 5 or 6 years ago.
5 or 6 years ago, I could read a book or article and take it for fact. I was naive enough to believe that if it were published, it had to be legitimate. There was no need to question anything. 5 years before that, I believed pretty much anything anyone said. My teachers knew everything. There was no need for "proof". If they said it in a classroom, it had to be true. Junior high is afterall a breeding ground for ridiculous rumors and heresay. With little to nothing to refute what is being said (or assumed), anything said was believable. With such a narrow perspective on the world, it was so easy to trust them. Hell, 5 years before that, I believed everything my parents told me. What they said was fact. It was truth. I couldn't dispute it. And quite frankly, were was no reason to. I depended on them for everything. Food, shelter, comfort, etc. My parents were essentially an infomational sieve, filtering out any information they didn't want to get to me. I can't blame them. That's what parents should do. We're not ready for the truth then anyway.
Now you take that and fast forward all that in chronological order. It looks like I grown a lot through out the years. As the world unravels to us as we get older, we become more skeptical and less trusting. What I once considered true was eventually contested and reassessed, resulting in my own personal opinion on these issues and "facts". It's pretty scary, because I only have a mere 26 years of experience under my belt.
What else could be out there? At this point in my adulthood, will the world continue to unravel itself like a ball of yarn? How will my opinions change as I get older? The future is so uncertain. We like to feel like we're in control as humans. It's one of the things that keep us sane. But will what I consider true now eventually be proven false? It's disheartening sometime when you find out that something you held as truth is exposed for what it really is. But at the same time there is room for growth.
As I read through this new book, I'm adding to my bag of tricks. As certain absolutes in my life are proven either true or false, I will at least have several perspectives to take into account that will lessen the blow. Honestly, I don't mind that at all.
