Tag Archives: smugness

Brief

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Brief: (adj) of short duration

I listened as a young pundit explained how disturbed he was that people were “no longer questioning.”

He thought it was caused by a newfound smugness.

I would beg to differ.Dictionary B

Actually, we are swimming away from being inquisitive because we’re being drowned by information. Long before we can form a question, we are given so much data that we’re afraid to inquire further, lest we be bored to death.

Some of the best advice I ever gave to myself was “be brief.”

It happened shortly after I began writing blogs and discovered my average word count was over sixteen hundred. I considered this to be respectable and spurned any notion that my writings were being ignored because of verbosity.

Then one day I read a sixteen hundred-word article. Becoming weary of the process at about word 452, I persevered, to prove my point that there would be a great payoff in the end.

The only result of that exercise was me deliberating whether to stubbornly over-write or embrace the anointing of brevity.

Now my blogs average about 350 to 400 words.

Have I become more stupid–incapable of elaborating?

No. I’ve given my fellow-humans a great gift:

Briefly read what I have to share.

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Bigot

Bigot: (n) a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.

Dictionary B

No sane people would ever admit they were intolerant.

It is easy to tuck and hide intolerance behind the holy pillars of experience, education, religious affiliation, racial discoveries and traditions.

In other words, tolerance cannot be defined by merely claiming that no intolerance exists.

To avoid being a bigot, it may be necessary to accept a universal definition for intolerance. Arriving at this proclamation–or getting any group of individuals to agree on it–may be completely impractical.

So let me just say that I’ve developed my own definition which lets me know when I have slipped into the role of being a bigot.

It is as follows:

Intolerance is a smugness that prods me to change someone’s mind.

Whenever that creeps into my soul and churns with an evangelism to chase down an infidel idea, I know that I am flirting dangerously with, or have even consummated the action of becoming a bigot.

It should be satisfactory to possess a truth that enriches our lives.

There is nothing wrong with living that truth out boldly, allowing the fruit of that tree of knowledge to sprout evidence.

But the minute we begin to judge others by whether they are planting a similar seed is when we literally end up … with bigotry.

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