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A Meaningful Enquiry

 I often get surprised to meet people who are quite confident about their viewpoints and refuse to listen to the viewpoints of everybody else. You feel like breaking your head against a pillar while talking to these people. Life is like an AI engine. Whatever type of videos we watch often, the AI engine of YouTube throws more such videos into our YouTube reels. Slowly, one develops a distorted perception of reality. 

Life is also like that. When we have very strong viewpoints, we refuse to listen to the people who have a different viewpoint. Slowly, such people maintain a distance, and we get surrounded by the people who have a viewpoint similar to ours. Thus, our viewpoints get confirmed every day that viewpoint appears to us to be quite universal. Slowly, we start rejecting the other viewpoint outrightly and we become prisoners of our own viewpoints. We become quite aggressive while telling our viewpoint, as if others are fools. 

Is there any way out? Yes. Definitely, and that way out is quite simple. Start listening. The moment we start watching the videos that give a different perspective, the AI understands that our area of interest is growing, and it also starts throwing those kinds of videos. The wider the variety of videos we watch, the wider the variety of suggestions thrown by the AI. Similarly, the moment we start listening to the viewpoints of people who think differently from us, our brain develops receptivity, and they start making sense to us. The next time we listen to them, they make more and more sense to us, since our framework of life has widened. 

There is a saying that "an empty vessel makes more noise". That's what I have experienced in life. Shallow people who have very limited exposure and experience of life are quite certain of "rights" and "wrongs". Unfortunately, they keep repeating these divisions in their minds and hardly allow any space for fresh air to enter. That's why it's very difficult to have any dialogue with them. In social interactions, we often encounter such people since they are the ones who reach high positions due to their strong convictions. Probably that's why social interactions are often quite noisy. Probably that's why saints in all ages used to stay away from that noisy society. Meaningful dialogue is possible only when everybody participating in the dialogue comes with curiosity and is open to listening. This world seems to me a happy marriage between the preachers and the followers, leaving hardly any scope for a meaningful enquiry. 

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