The Contest : Open Minds versus Closed Doors

Traditionally, front doors of homes in rural India remain open all day long, while those in city homes remain all the time closed except for entry or exit of some one. Keeping the doors closed is an influence and sign of modern cultures. Keeping doors closed may not mean closeness of mind in absolute terms, but certainly, it is an indication in that direction. For a human-being to blossom to full glory, open-mindedness is of great value.

Open-mindedness is not something to be achieved by a person isolated from his/her society but depends on how a particular society moulds lifestyles of its people. Or, in other words, no body can be with an open-mind if his.her society has adopted a close-mind lifestyle.

An open mind means listening to all sorts of views and opinions on everything that matters for a person, and then only, taking a decision to act upon. It, inter alia, also means not closing the mind under influence of established sects, religions, faiths, castes or creeds, etc or even getting swayed with a majority opinion on a matter. Getting to know all sorts of opinions and views also needs intermixing with various hues and shades of people. This is where an open door comes into play.

Modern cultures of individualized or family entertainment through TV or video games, etc have promoted closed-door policy changing the socializing pattern of people from visiting public parks, community clubs, and neighborhood homes to interacting online through social sites. Such online contacts are generally of people from far-away places often unknown to circumstances of each other. So, these interactions can’t extract views on a person’s problems which are often localized. Discussions on social sites are of general nature having only global value and hence unrelated to any particular locality.

About 80 percent of problems faced by a person are due to his/her local circumstances, therefore, being open-minded means getting various views and opinions on the problems faced by the person him/herself. These views and opinions can come from people residing in the person’s locality only. This makes socializing at local levels more relevant for open-mindedness rather than socializing at global level. Thus, global socializing through Internet connectivity is going to be proved superficial as far as open-mindedness of a person is concerned.

It is only the first generation of Internet users so far, and they are still in a stage of probation, too early to understand the reality of global socializing. As soon as, they come to realize the futility of global socializing in resolving their individualized problems, they would turn back to localized socializing in their homes, community clubs and public parks, giving their places on the Internet to newer generations to experience the futility. That will require people to open their doors to their neighbors and other visitors.

Culture is never limited to a person but belongs to the whole society. Open-mindedness belongs to an individual but is governed by his/her socializing with other people in the society, making it a cultural trait rather than that of the individual. An individual may go to a public park but his/her socializing requirements get fulfilled only when a lot of persons visit the public parks to interact with people of the same locality. Therefore, open-mindedness is a society-dependent attribute of a person rather than his/her own.

Local newspapers and TV channels may have some flavor of the locality, only when the authors and editors thereof are free from global socializing and involve with local people through localized socializing by opening their respective doors to welcome people.

Apart from people opting for passive entertainments behind their closed doors, cultures of the world are getting commanded by dogs rather than people by themselves. In the name of security and love for wildlife, many persons have pet or semi-pet dogs in their respective homes to warn visitors with their annoying barks that they are not welcome there. Additional danger to the visitors is getting bitten by dogs and thus suffering from rabies virus or from having the painful injections as a precautionary measure.

This dogged culture fast catching up with rich layers of all societies is prohibitive to an open-door policy and hence to open-mindedness of the people. Most of the people loaded with such a dogged culture are of the opinion that dogs are very faithful and friendly to humans, but the fact remains that dogs are nothing but dogs faithful and friendly with a piece of flesh only.

For a transformation to an open-mind, lifestyle matters more than expression of views. Publically expressed views may be false and subject to multiple interpretations by people coming across them, but the lifestyle carries the truth of life of a person and has no interpretation but only an inducement in others for adopting it if it is logically appealing to them. This underlines the significance of active socializing rather than passive entertainments in evolution of a society to a healthier state of open-mindedness.