by Alexander Mark

Created on: October 05, 2008

A friend of mine and I were having a discussion the other day. It started out innocently enough, but he had to push his point. He was talking about a drive-in theater and it came up that I had never been to one. I guess he could tell that I had something against them and he asked me about it. I told him I never, ever want to go to one. His argument was simply that I couldn't know if I liked it or not unless I had been to one. We went round and round as I tried to explain that a drive-in theater would spoil the movie for me, streetlights and stray car headlights, outside noises and even being in a car to watch the movie would all distract me and ruin the experience. That is probably because I love to watch movies and I do not go simply to hang out with friends and have a good time. In fact, I prefer to go to the theater alone. I didn't tell him all my reasons, I merely wanted to convey the fact that I know darn well what I like and don't like and I don't need anyone to tell me that I can't know and that I don't know myself well enough to make those judgments.

I definitely agree that new experiences can open your eyes to things you never knew, about the world and yourself, and we cannot let emotional assumptions based on zero knowledge keep us from new experiences. I love airplanes, but I used to hate helicopters because they "didn't fly right." They take off vertically and do not smoothly glide through the air. They're much louder and they're naturally unstable aircraft. They just didn't "feel right" to me. Well, my brother offered to pay for a helicopter ride for me if I wanted to go, because he wanted me to experience it for myself. He wanted to open my eyes to the fact that I had made a judgment, about an aspect of aviation, that was totally wrong. I decided to go, and I loved it. In many ways, it is much better than flying in an airplane. The experience is amazing, we took off and went straight over the treetops and suddenly we were hanging over the freeway. I thought we were hovering but I looked at the airspeed indicator and saw that we were doing seventy!
The reason I was wrong though, was because I had no real reasons for disliking helicopters except that they didn't "feel" right. Now I make my judgments based on experience and reason, not feelings. Feelings can be a help, but it's the mind that is most useful in the end.
I know that bringing up politics and my very overt opinions next will rankle many readers, but it is completely essential to convey the

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