We are all wrong some of the time
I discovered in a later class that, in one way, I'd been right - in our math system, i is impossible. But our math system isn't complete enough to account for everything that's possible in the real world. In fact, it's been demonstrated that no math system can be both complete and coherent - that is, no system can explain everything and still make sense within itself.
I've been thinking about this recently as the presidential campaign gets into high gear, and we start hearing more and more from politicians and pundits. A lot of people with strong ideological systems, generally convinced that all other systems are flawed in some way.
Here's what occurred to me, though. If, even in something as simple and universal as math, no single system can explain everything, how could one ideological system possibly explain everything? If no single mathematical model for the universe's most basic functions can suffice, how could we hope to guide something as bewilderingly complex as human society using a single political model?
We all have our own models for human behavior, our own ideologies, our own expectations. And most of them work fairly well. But we are all wrong sometimes. None of our models are perfect, none of our ideologies account for everything. If we decide that our own beliefs are totally and completely correct, with no room for other possibilities, then all we're doing is giving ourselves a blind spot.
This isn't to say that we shouldn't believe in anything. Clearly, if we don't believe in anything, we can't be right either. It is just to say this: In the course of your life, you will never reach a perfect understanding of the world. You can either try to understand other perspectives, and get closer to a complete understanding, or you can decide that your current view is complete. And it isn't.
