Reflection
To accept everything that is promoted socially or politically without having the curiosity to critique it for truth or reality is mental laziness. It is one cause of the misguided opinions that people form without any attempt to base them in fact. This is one reason so much disinformation travels across social media. Good will is not an adequate substitute for ignorance. A sincere desire to follow what one is convinced is true requires a critical, open, and informed mind and a willingness to take time to sift out what is actually factual. Whether it be political, religious or cultural it is worth the attempt to cut through bias and propaganda and base one’s judgment in truth as far as possible.
Prayer
Let me remember the call that we be salt of the earth and leaven.
Action
I will examine my own usual mental disposition. Am I mentally lazy? Do I make decisions based in fact? Where do my commitments lie?
Suggested Reading
Salt is good; but if salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless… it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Luke 14:25-35
The truth shall make you free.
John 8:32
I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.
Walter Cronkite
We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
John F. Kennedy
The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oldest and most foolish failing there is.
Stephen Fry
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard
Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Mental laziness makes us lose all lively interest in the subject.
Swami Vivekananda
You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynahan
What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.
Bodie Thoene
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell
If I want to find out what truth is, not knowing what it is, I must be able to see what is false.
Jiddu Krishnamurti