Guest Author - Linda Sue Grimes

1. Do you believe that capitalism or communism works better?
2. Do you believe that George W. Bush or Fidel Castro is a better leader?
3. Do you believe that Hitler killed six million Jews?
4. Do you believe that Stalin killed millions of people?
5. Do you believe that the former Soviet Union put dissidents in prison?
6. Do you believe that American settlers and the U.S Army committed genocide against the American Indians?
7. Do you believe that Saddam Hussein committed genocides against his own people?

1. Do you believe that capitalism or communism works better?

If you have a definite answer for each of the questions above, how did you decide what you believe? You, no doubt, have no first-hand knowledge about any of the situations. Unless you have had the opportunity to live in a communist country and a capitalist country, how do you really know which system is better? You have to rely on second-hand information gathered from history courses in high school and college, from books and videos about history, or from other people who have, in fact, experienced life under both communist and capitalist regimes.

2. Do you believe that George W. Bush or Fidel Castro is a better leader?

Likewise about the second question: unless you have had to opportunity to live under Castro and Bush, your knowledge is second hand. Perhaps, as an American citizen you have been able to visit Cuba to observe for yourself. Are you really sure you could see enough to know definitively which leader is better? In this case, so far you’ve had only four years to compare, since Bush has been in office only since 2001. How much can you learn by living in Cuba, for example, for only four years? Of course, you could get some ideas, but again, how sure could you be?

3. Do you believe that Hitler killed six million Jews?

For the third question, again you simply cannot attain first-hand information. Even Holocaust survivors from death camps could offer only limited information; after all, they survived! How sure are they that so many others did not? You must rely on books and history lessons for your information. Once again, it is secondary at best.

The other questions suffer the same dearth of first-hand information for you. Whatever you believe about them, you have gotten the information second-hand or even third- or fourth-hand sources. If you were visiting the Kurds in the 1980s when Saddam gassed them, you might have first-hand information, if you were lucky enough not to have been gassed along with them.

These questions, of course, surely have definite answers, but in order to decide what they are we have be able to gather lots of information and then be able to interpret that information.

Even though little of what we think we know can be verified by first-hand information, we do not allow that lack to stop us from holding our beliefs. Are there better ways of knowing? Are there truly good sources from which we can obtain information?

A mentioned earlier, our information about the world which we have not been able to directly experience comes from sources that are secondary to us. The media, including books, magazines, newspapers, TV, radio, etc., delivers us information, but most of the writers and commentators are getting the information secondarily also.

So what are we to do? Knowing that our ability to know the answers to questions about events that take place far back in time or far away from our location, we simply have to use our judgment about the pieces of information we get. We don’t want to use prejudice, that is, forming an opinion without really thinking about it but basing it on prior beliefs. We don’t want to follow emotionally driven arguments without due recourse to reason.

We all want to know the truth, and the greater the controversy the greater the possibility we cannot know the whole truth about the situation. If there are two or more points of view regarding issues, we owe ourselves the courtesy of trying to understand all the differing points. For without trying to understand other viewpoints, we limit our ability to understand or even formulate our own.