The Virtue of a Closed Mind
Being open isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
Liberalism wants ever more openness. As the one of the great architects of the modern liberal order said at his inauguration, the goal of his presidency was “open markets, open competition, open hearts, open minds.”
George Bush. H.W., that is. He was a liberal in conservative clothing. Add in open borders, and open marriages and we’ve arrived in 2020. All of these are bad. But of the many things liberalism has convinced us to open up, perhaps none is as vicious as the endless pursuit of ever more open minds.
Schools Open Minds, Unfortunately
Teachers, administrators, and (I shudder to utter the phrase) educational activists, have wherever possible argued for open minds as the great academic virtue of our age. A math teacher once attempted to convince me that open-mindedness was the deepest truth. When I countered that, in math, he would find such a statement appalling, conjuring the image of kids learning that the statement “2+2=5 is as true as the right answer,” he laughed.
So indoctrinated he could not take the objection seriously. The idea of a totally open mind is an educator’s wet dream. In this dream all the equal people are free to do as they please, in mutual respect of one another. While the concepts of liberalism were at one point fertile, they’ve sterilized the minds in which the concepts dwell. The open mind is a sterile mind. This is a problem.
Open minded people are always stupid.
This is so in a necessary sense. To know a thing is to say what it truly is, to say of what is, that it is. This is knowledge. The open-minded person may never say this. At most, they can say of what is, that it may be. Or they could say of what is, that they see it this way. But the hedge shows the truth:They don’t know. And those who don’t know are stupid. They stand open-mouthed, gaping at reality, unable to utter the true and fitting word.
The Virtue of Being Closed
There are, of course, closed-minded stupid people. Those who say of what is, that it is not. And who refuse to listen to any other account of what is. These people though are at present quite rare. And they can be argued with since they will stake out a position, albeit a false one.
The closed-minded stupid person is useful instructionally to teach students what the various wrong answers are. Socrates found the Sophists endlessly useful. Yet closed-minded people hold out the hope of being smart. They may in fact be saying of what is that it is. And only those intelligent enough to close their mind will be able to find out if they’re right by fitting the reality to the words firmly and hefting it to see if it has the proper weight.
As a hand holds an object comfortably, the fingers fitting around the contours and textures, so too does the mind that grasps something. An open hand, by contrast, is a hand that does not grasp. Whatever object you place into it will fall out, or easily have it snatched away.
So too the open mind. If their mind “grasps” something it is only temporary, with the hand open. The goal of being open to other possibilities prevents the grasping of the full implications of the given thing. Being open-minded about what knowledge is prevents a reader from understanding my essay.
Object lesson: Watch how an open-minded reader responds to this essay. The truly open-minded are those who don’t feel threatened. They should.
Open Minds, Closed Minds, and Your Child’s School
Educators who attempt to teach your child to be open-minded want your child to be stupid. Either they are devious or simply stupid; in the end they want your child to be as they themselves are. They are hoping the child will be gullible, and that whatever conviction or truth the child may attain, he will take it with something stronger than a grain of salt — something more like a caustic chemical that dissolves the hand that holds it. The teachers have held their minds open so long they can no longer think clearly. They would like your child to do the same. They are fools who consider themselves urbane, cosmopolitan, and intelligent. See them as they actually are: intellectually naked, vain, useless, and blind.
While most parents think that the schools they support with their taxes have hired first-rate educators, they have in fact hired third-rate sophists. This disconnect of course presents a danger. But the parents’ blasé attitude can be understood.
Openness as Intellectual Vice
The sophist filling your child’s head with nonsense well-blended with actual instruction is also telling your child to make up his or her own mind. This, superficially, is an advantage to smart parents of smart kids who want an actual education for little Jim and Suzie. Since the teacher is open-minded, they will not authoritatively teach my child that our familial, political, and religious values are wrong. The advantage, though is illusory.
By embracing a model of education which prioritizes openness we teach the child that the thing beyond the truth they arrive at in education is first their desire, what they want to be true, and second their will, what they choose as the truth. The frame of open-mindedness replaces knowledge with desire and choice. This prevents actual knowledge.
Thus while you hope the kids listen to your sensible instruction at home, if it turns out that the truth is bitter, or hard to master, they are likely to choose another “truth”; to choose what they want. Open-mindedness dissolves their capacity to know. And this is precisely why the virtue we need to embrace is closed-mindedness.
Advantages of Closed Minds
The fear that this will result in elementary school teachers forthrightly arguing for the existence of fifty genders is not irrational. They will. But it is the least of your concerns as a closed-minded parent. Should such a teacher truly attempt to make such an argument to your child, and to make it as a deeply true and inarguable fact in the way we ask the math teacher to teach your child addition, the teacher will be easily exposed as the incompetent fool they are.
You, as a parent, would come to love and embrace your role as a combatant for your child’s mind and soul. Often you’d be up against close-minded educators who are silly and wrong. But we could finally dispense with the maddening obfuscation of educators who “imply, then deny” so that you can never manage to disagree with them. When knowledge is known as correspondence with reality, those who truly know remain unthreatened by the ignorant. Truth will out.
So we must learn to live with less openness. We close our borders, and bring essential medical supply chains back to the USA, and practice the natural form of marriage which is monogamy; most of all, let us learn to close our minds. Close them tight. You are of course free to disagree with me. I look forward to your argument trying to convince me that I’m wrong.
