“If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.” – Meditations 6.21

Opinions are funny things. Everyone has them, but no one has the same ones. It is today as it was thousands of years ago, and probably as it will be thousands of years from now – you and a peer may have ninety-nine of the same opinions, but the hundredth has the potential to make you mortal enemies.

Those who know me know that I can be quite opinionated. It’s for a reason – if I have my mind made up about something, I feel strongly about it. I have always had strong opinions, and often those opinions have gotten me in some bitter debates. This has been a trend for more than a decade, but I was not always on the side I am now.

I consider myself progressive, but there was a time when I was one of the most conservative young men you could find. I was proud of what I thought I knew, and I cast empathy aside in favor of cruelty disguised as logic and reason.

I was young and naive – just twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old – but I was convinced I had peaked in my emotional development. This self-righteousness never exists on its own – there are always consequences to those who must bear its heavy burden. My faith in the Lord and myself meant more than any other relationship I was a part of at the time.

Then something broke all that confidence – a handful of people took a chance on me. They slowly dragged me out of the pit of misery and hatred I had dug for myself, and over the course of roughly a year – coinciding nicely with the first several months of the pandemic – I re-evaluated every belief I held dear.

I remember clearly that, when I was just entering adolescence, I confidently told those around me that I would happily change my mind if they could persuade me to with a convincing argument based on logic and reason. Looking back, I think I did accept the possibility that I could be proven wrong, but the door to that possibility was locked shut by a lot of misplaced self-righteousness.

Six years later, I often struggle to remind myself that these things I find abhorrent in the world, and especially in my country, I once would have supported. Now this begs the question of if that handful of good people had not taken a chance on me, or if happenstance caused that I never met them to begin with. What then? Would I have figured it out on my own eventually, or would I have grown to be what I hate now?

I believe this is why I still bother engaging in these sorts of debates, as frustrating as they often are. In everyone who “abides in his error and ignorance,” as Marcus Aurelius wrote, I see a bit of myself. It isn’t lost on me that I could still be wrong about the things I believe now, and that my mind might be changed in the future, but my current beliefs are built on much more solid moral ground than those of the previous decade.

Still, it is ironic that I am so firm in my beliefs now, especially when compared to those of my younger self. I often joke that if my younger self knew what he would become, he would have gone insane. The difference now is in what my beliefs are predicated on, what Marcus Aurelius meant when he wrote, “I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured.”

This truth is that of the common good, that which is in the best interest of humanity. This is why I don’t subscribe to the idea that there are no “incorrect” opinions. Now if one person’s favorite color is blue, and another’s is green, neither of them hold an incorrect opinion. But when morality is on the line and livelihoods are at stake, someone who acts against the common good is manifestly incorrect.

But we live in an era where, despite all our progress, the sanctity of human life is still conditional. In this country, it is largely dependent on your opinions, and those who tout empathy and inclusion are being marked for death by those whose hearts are iced over.

Many of those who appear evil are simply misled and misguided. They have fallen prey to some religion or some politics that validate a primal hatred cultivated by the movers of society. I know this, and I believe this, because I was once in that snare. It only took a few good people to dismantle that apparatus and set me free.

Undoubtedly though, there are plenty of truly evil people. Maybe they pray for you on Sunday, but on Monday, they’re ready to end your life. I want to believe most people aren’t like this, but it is difficult with the current climate. I harbor no judgement for anyone who has severed ties over such fundamental differences, but it is extraordinarily difficult for me to do such a thing.

A professor and role model of mine once told me that empathy can be cultivated in anyone, and I am trying to internalize that as much as possible. I still believe most minds can be changed with the right approach. I’m fairly firm in that opinion at the moment, but time may tell if it changes.