The Yin and the Yan......

"In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story." - Walter Cronkite

Do you agree with Walter Cronkite that it's necessary to see both sides of an issue in order to discover the truth?

The symbol of judicial systems is a blindfolded lady bearing in her arms a weighing pan. The telling feature of this emblem is the blind fold. It is the disinterested person (NOT uninterested!) who can judge an issue impartially or serve as an arbiter. Bias in any wake of life whatsoever only causes us to lean more towards our predilections sheathing and distorting the absolute truth on the way.

“Every coin has two sides.” The life is full of paradoxes such as the yin and the yen. The facade of every reality cannot be deciphered without the complete knowledge. For instance, the media may air the massacre and condemn the army for it. This in turn would enrage the public. But it may be possible that the army had no alternative to prevent the outbreak from spreading far and wide. A rotten body part must be severed ere it consumes the salubrious whole in its flagrant flares!

Blind leads the blind. It is in the ‘dark night of the soul’ that we become the Ba Ba sheep. In the sheep mentality one does not think for oneself and falls an easy prey to his own orthodoxies, and prejudices. Our religions are perhaps the most striking examples of this type. The Muslims, the Hindus, the Christians and the 300 other categories hold on firmly to their tenets and become blood thirsty bigots slaying in the ‘holy name’ of ‘Proselytization’.

It is extremely vital for us to digest the wholesome reality. Chemistry of elements can be used to elucidate the importance of the full picture. The organic compounds, esp. nitro compounds, can be of great industrial utility provided one knows the ‘Safety temperature range’! Heating them beyond a certain temperature can spell disaster and can put you behind the bars for incendiarism!

Assessing a given situation from a holistic viewpoint one must look at the pros and the cons alike without favoring one over the other. Prejudices always are so very cloying and difficult to part from but at the end of the day they only serve to make us the frogs of the well. Be it pure sciences, religion or our very judicial systems one cannot accede to lopsided views or he or she is to defeat the cause he or she sought to foster.