The Rulebook: "Believe what you want"

"Brilliant" is a word that I hardly use to describe someone. Actually, I'm pretty sure I've never described someone as brilliant. Things, maybe. But not people. I'm going to change that right now.

Our Physics teacher in high school was absolutely brilliant. The dude knew everything there was to know about physics and astronomy, and knew a ton about more or less everything else. Brilliant. He often indulged us about the political battle between the administration and the teachers. (There's been a contract battle for a couple of years now.) And by indulge, I mean he tore apart the administration. He was the students' champion because he didn't listen to what anyone said except himself. But that's what made him so brilliant! A couple of my friends and I started drafting Duggan Principles in the back of our agenda books. Sometimes he just talked about stuff for the first 20 minutes of class, and there was always some "Wow, he's totally right" feeling when he was finished.

The first Duggan Principle I'll talk about is "Believe what you want." It's something that I feel is prevalent all over the place. One of my professors at Stonehill always says that math is just whoever can yell out their answer louder than everyone else. I've always held the belief that humanities papers are subjective and had a different interpretation for each person who read them. To hell with anyone who tells you something you don't want to hear! This coincides harmoniously with the concept of moral relativism that I enjoyed blogging about last year in philosophy. I eventually came to the conclusion that the truth is that there is no truth. That is to say, believe what you want. Sometimes, you might be in the vast minority (say, if you were to argue that 1+1=3), but when it's matters of what's relative, it's all you.

So believe what you want. This is your rulebook. Don't listen to what I'm saying unless it agrees with what you have to say. Hell, don't listen to what I have to say at all. Just take in what I say, and formulate your own thoughts from it.