Books and blinders

This last weekend we finally attacked the daunting project of moving books and shelves around. We'd been avoiding it for long enough, on the reasoning that before we did any major furniture moving we wanted to buy a carpet cleaner and clean the carpets thoroughly, since we need to do that anyway and it makes sense to do it before any moving so as not to move heavy stuff twice. We still intend to purchase a carpet cleaner when a good enough deal comes up. But we cannot let that be an excuse for avoiding necessary work any longer.

So we moved the two bookshelves in the office up to the bonus room, and moved two bookshelves from the nursery into our bedroom and another two into the office. Now the nursery actually has wall space, allowing us to move the crib out from in front of the window (my nightmares about shattering glass falling over sleeping Baby as clumsy burglars trip over her in the middle of the night are now over) and making the room safe for Jane to crawl around in without everything being a no-no.

The first half of the job took far longer than it had to because we kept stopping and flipping though books. Eventually we learned better and strictly charged ourselves to concentrate on getting the job done, deciding what to keep later. But I read quite a bit of interesting stuff, including an extract from a political science textbook from one of Michael's old classes. Because of the subject matter I was sure it would be controversial, but as I read it it actually made a good bit of sense.

Basically, it presumed a hypothetical race where a white runner and a black runner are competing, only the authorities make the black runner run with weights. Naturally, he falls behind. Eventually, the authorities decide that this is unfair, and take the weights away, but the black runner is still behind. What should they do? Would it be fair to let the black runner catch up? That might reduce the inequity of the overall race, but would that be fair to the white runner, who after all didn't make the rules in the first place? Maybe the white runner really was faster, anyway.

Of course, it was presenting some of the dilemmas of affirmative action, which I still don't believe is a good solution. History is full of inequality, and there is no way any 'authorities' can even things out by changing the rules around to let anyone 'catch up' to anyone else at any given time. The best thing to do is to make sure that the rules are as fair as possible, right now, and let things take their natural course. However, the little analogy did help me to understand some of the reasoning behind some people's philosophy, and to resolve more than ever not to be so wrapped in my 'right' way of thinking that I miss out on the opportunity to hear what the other person is saying. I likely won't change my mind, but I might learn something about the other side, and I certainly wouldn't get anywhere with smug self-confidence or antagonising patronage.

However, this in turn made me question how far to go in any sort of open-mindedness. Obviously I want to be teachable where there is room for error. But I don't want to be tossed about by every wind of doctrine, susceptible to the least convincing. At some point I must keep my blinders resolutely on and not even consider veering from the path of truth. How tightly these discernment blinders must be kept is a puzzling question.