Everything is relative

Yes, I agree with you

Hello Marishka

Many things you stated I fully agree.
When it comes to beauty, for instance, or taste or whether a piece of art or music does or does not inspire you, there is certainly no truth to it but it is your own feelings that matter the most.

Of course, they did some studies about what people find beautiful - let us say photos of faces - by using sophisticated methods to measure brain reactions. And there appears to be a tendency of a main stream, but it is not an exact science and, as we all know, there are a lot of things in studies that can influence results - which they proved time and again. So we should not take every published study for granted, of course!

But, they say, people tend to have more trust in "beautiful" looking people and are influenced by that. So that is why orchestras let new candidates play behind curtains to concentrate on what you can hear rather than what you see. And big companies start to evaluate and select candidates for a new job by hiding the photo and the name, gender, and so on when comparing different job applications with each other...

In my view, we should widen up and train ourselves to keep out such judgings too whenever possible and get to a wider variety and broaden up our own opinions and judgings about people, beauty and such matters and feel free to stand up for what we think is valuable and worth to respect rather than go with the flow. Too many such prejudices lead to exclusions and discriminations and rob us of many chances to get better results.

Now I would like to put these things into the bigger picture:

We are social beings. And we grow up in a time, country, culture, continent, and so on where certain values are shared and others have a difficult stand.

Rules, written ones, and unwritten ones are important for societies so that not everyone has to bother about how to behave, what to do, and what not to do.
Life would become very stressful could we not rely on rules.
Now, that is a bit tricky and quite the opposite I stated before, right?
 
So I would like to put it as follows:
When it comes down to fundamental rules, societies should see to it that these are respected.
Let me give you some very simple examples:
- You should, for instance, not steal your neighbor's car only because it is more suitable to you than your own.
- Or you should teach your children some behaving so as not to frighten away visitors or annoy your acquaintances and relatives when they come to visit.
- And you should restrain from forcing your opinions on someone else when you do not have a right to do so.

And then there are some believes society should agree on so that we can be part of a larger community. I mean that in a wider sense than just let us say what religion or politics or economics suggest.

These rules and beliefs can change over time - depending on developments or adaptations a society goes through as a whole.

So, for instance, a patchwork family was unthinkable a couple of decades back. Nowadays, it has become acceptable in the sense that life should go on, and if it works why not allowing and accepting it.

It should be more about how you lead your daily life, how respectful you are rather than holding up harsh principles from the past, as I see it. But we should keep the essence and the idea of trying to find out what is good and reasonable and what is bad or stupid or even evil.

Philosophy is a good example that we always have to rethink what we are, what does us some good, what new approaches we should take when things change, and how we could adapt better to the present challenges and the ones that lay in the future.

I like to watch TV broadcasts on philosophy.
There is a huge variety of opinions, views on our world and how we look at our social life and humanity as a whole.
I pick up some ideas and I am skeptical about others.

But it is always a good thing to listen to other standpoints because it is widening up our horizon and, in the best case, can bring us to change some of our ideas on life and society even if it stings a bit sometimes.
Good documentaries about topics that are relevant help a lot too to understand what is going on and how things are in detail that I had not much of a clue about before.
 
No one has a right to define the truth on his or her own, I fully agree with you on that.

But what we often see nowadays:
More and more people value their own opinion higher than experts or scientists or in general people that have more insight into a certain matter than they do themselves.
And that is a pity. 

It makes it very difficult to exchange ideas and discuss matters, especially when you find out that too much is simplified - sometimes such debates and discussions remind me of ideologies rather than facts and objective arguments.

Social media have a great impact in my view – not always to any good I am afraid.
People are not yet used to keep a certain skepticism and ask themselves if a statement or explanation can be true or exaggerated or misleading – especially if it meets their gut feeling or opinion that is prevalent in their “peer group” or bubble.

Funny enough: when Gutenberg invented a much easier and better way of printing books soon after pamphlets of all sorts and about any matter were dispatched on end in public places and chaos of opinions, many harsh comments, strange ideas, and attempts to politicize masses or fight over religious beliefs and whatnot spread over cities, countries and later continents and lead to serious troubles. A new media can change things for the worse for a while I guess and it takes quite some time until people get to a better way of using these new media, as history can teach us...;)

So a wise way to deal with such things is something every generation should hold dear and keep up.

This starts in families, neighborhoods, villages, and towns, and, of course, schools, published media, TV,  books, you name it.

The difficult thing is to break complex explanations down into more understandable and acceptable statements so that important issues are spread among groups and populations that are not so well educated but should get the gist of the information either way.

Because: People should be able to keep trust in what they hear and read.

If too much of this trust gets lost then it is the beginning of a chaotic unreasonable "fight" over opinions and this leads to polarized societies or disrespectful treatment of people with another background, social status, different views, or a different situation in life.

We should be able to include people, rather than exclude them when they have a different view based on their own experiences. The more people we can include the more we get out of them in the end.

Discussing unimportant differences on end leads to nothing, I guess, so we should back down there a bit.

Some changes need time, though.
New situations can be a challenge and difficult to understand and adapt to. Corona is a good example of that.
A wise thing would be to make an early start and enter into discussions before too many different views have settled in and can't be changed anymore or only with much difficulty.

Therefore it is crucial to look forward and discuss things that lay ahead of us as a society, country, population, and so on...

Fear should be kept out if ever possible because it is narrowing down our thoughts and puts us in a state of emergency like in the old days when tigers and other predators were around and, to survive these instincts were a necessity. That is how our brain is wired and we should keep that in mind.

So it is about foreseeing troubles and reacting to them in due time before they become a threat.
To do that we should maintain and care for our institutions, systems, and procedures.
Good governance is one of the crucial things to accomplish tasks and maintain stability and normal life.
.
So let us not discuss only tastes and too simplified so-called truths, but let us get to the bottom of things, to facts and differentiated views on matters and what could help us to have a better understanding of important things. We should try to overcome differences, and, by doing that, develop our societies and our lives.
 
This is not an easy thing and needs quite some effort on all sides.

It has a lot to do with acknowledging facts and trying to understand one another’s situations and backgrounds to reach a new common ground that will lead to good and reasonable actions and improvements we can all profit from in the future.

Therefore we all should try to put our views into perspective and not overestimate what we can grasp on our own. Life has become a complex and diverse matter - many things have been improved over time, others risk that we forget about them, neglect them, take them for granted, and sometimes just don't care anymore about them. It starts with simple things we can do ourselves and by doing them inspire others to follow.

A lot of things can only be achieved by a good collaboration nowadays.
The idea of fixing things as a lone wolf or hero will die out, I guess.

So we should enable and encourage people to open up, look around, keep their curiosity, and try to work in teams and achieve goals together, no matter whether they are students, workers, villagers, or citizens.

-> I hope this is not too hopeful, too simplified, or even too naive an approach these days.

So I am looking forward to whatever you think about such things. Feel free to respectfully disagree or point out your views...:)

Best
Urs