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"You don't need a counterpoint."

When my young, NEW friend said to me that the earth was flat, I was startled.

I asked, "Are you sure? Let's ask some more people. Maybe people furthest away from us.

He said, "I don't believe in that."

Don't be swayed by me. I cleverly framed my sentence to imply that he was wrong and I was right. I said that He said that the earth was flat. Now you'd easily believe that he was wrong and I was right. But he could've been right too. It is my story and I'll give myself the benefit of the doubt. But that's not important.

I said, "Let's look at the present conflict between India and Pakistan for example. How do we know what happened? Who shot the first bullet and why?"

His eyes narrowed. He was not going to be convinced easily. He wasn't the first person I met who jumped into his patriotic suit while discussing morality. I was getting at why we (people of both countries) are so lazy about knowing the truth. When does truth begin for one and the other? He had that look which said "Why even bother?"

I continued "We don't even know which drunken man crossed the border? Or which man across the border brought him home and laid him on his back. Or which man saw the unconscious drunken man being put down by the man across the border and drew his gun and put a bullet through his head."

"We are so afraid of 'them'. We are so afraid to hear what they have to say. Our governments are so afraid of what the media thinks and what it will report to the people." In reality, the media does not think. It does a CTRL C and a CTRL V. It is not even trained to understand how to find the truth. Yet, we treat their reports as our sacred texts to feed the cycle of fear again. Could we really know what really happened? Could our media know without talking to the other? 

Don't we truly and absolutely need a counterpoint to understand our universe?

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