balanced judgment

One thing I really try to instill in my students is to reach a balanced judgment on an issue they are writing about. In science, this bears out in that it is important to deal with all the facts & hypotheses dealing with an issue without favoring one over the other for no particular reason. The constant progression of science will ultimately shed light on scientific falsehoods.

It takes some effort to teach this, however, because we don't see a lot of modeling of balanced judgment in the rest of our non-academic lives. What we tend to see instead is spin. The truth of the matter isn't what is important, it's how well you can convince others that your opinion or position on an issue is the right one. This mentality of rhetoric pervades our current bi-polar U.S. political arena without a doubt. It is also pervasive in our culture through advertising - to sell the product is more important than to be completely truthful about it, so stretch the truth as far as is legally possible. The problem is that a mentality of rhetoric is not about truth, it's about power.

Love-Think-Speak requires that we abandon this kind of behavior. Things that are true are to be valued above things that are false, and achieving power through falsehood does not reflect a respect for the things in life that are true and good. There are few things more deserving of respect than when a person is open and honest with the truth regardless of how it might affect them.