Making a choice. Choosing a side. Defending a point. Taking a position.

In short – being decisive.

What is it about taking a position that scares so many people today?

In truth, it seems that this reluctance has always been around. It was even captured in this soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to?

This is one of my great frustrations of contemporary life. In general, it seems to me that people are far less inclined to form an opinion, take a position and then defend it for fear of being the recipient of withering fire from any number of enemy positions. I mean, who wants to be called a bigot, a racist, a homophobe or an Islamaphobe? Why be the tall blade of grass? Doesn’t it get cut first?

I guess that it should come as no surprise that so few do stick their necks out – there is so much downside. Police in Chicago are arresting journalists stating that their “first amendment rights can be terminated”. As evidenced in the Brett Kimberlin situation, bloggers have had their families and jobs threatened for voicing opinions (I have had my job threatened by an anonymous Twitterer – not for Kimberlin but another situation) – private citizen and blogger, Mike Stack, LA County Assistant DA Patrick Frey and CNN pundit Erick Erickson (of Redstate) have all been SWATed, and one – attorney and blogger Aaron Walker, was arrested for publishing the truth about Kimberlin by a Luddite judge who seems to have little grasp of modern technology.

Has our society become so conditioned by relativism and post-modernism that people don’t seem to know how to compare, contrast and make a decision? Actually, we have had generations who have been told that making a decision that one thing is objectively better than the other is wrong. I mean, who are we to pass judgement on someone else?

Have people simply lost the ability to comprehend reason and understand objective truth and do some seem so threatened by a dissenting opinion?

It seems that one of the hallmarks of success is the very ability to make a decision and stick with it, that is to be decisive. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit points to this in an article from Psychology Today:

Not long ago, the psychologists Timothy Judge and Charlice Hurst conducted a fascinating study. Partnering with the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth they examined the progress of more than 12,000 people for more than two decades. They were interested in all sorts of advantages and disadvantages that might impact whether a person winds up digging ditches or founding the next Apple Computer. Judge and Hurst looked at things like the occupation of the teenagers’ parents. Did they grow up in a blue collar home or a white collar home? Were the teens’ parents doctors and lawyers, or dropouts and n’er-do-wells? The researchers were also interested in finding out what kind of grades the teens earned in high school, and what kind of scores they received on their SATs.

Then Judge and Hurst compared all of these things to the annual income the teenagers were earning by their late thirties and early forties. In general, the results turned out how you might expect. The kids with the wealthy, well-educated parents who graduated near the top of their high school class tended to make more money as adults than the blue collar kids who figured out early on that formal school wasn’t really their bag.

But Judge and Hurst also looked at something else. This is where things get interesting. A unique subset of people in the study did not follow this pattern. By the time they reached their middle years, some sons and daughters of roofers and plumbers whose grades (ahem) made the top half of the class possible, still ended up making 30-60 percent more money each year than many of their more privileged peers. What this select breed of underdogs had in common was nothing but a unique set of personal beliefs (stemming from emotional stability, internal locus of control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem) about their ability to shape the future. Those beliefs translate into the ability to choose one course of action (entrepreneurship, less prestigious career path, etc.) while quitting others.

Discrimination has become a dirty word in our Orwellian society but to discriminate only means “to choose” or “to decide”. As I wrote in the comments yesterday, people can see both sides of an argument but eventually they have to come down on one side or the other. If they don’t – nothing gets resolved. Stasis and paralysis are the result.

The Ayn Rand quote that I posted yesterday seems oddly appropriate:

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.

I would add that not only is reason not automatic, it is sometimes painful, often difficult, frequently risky and always the result hard work.

Here’s the issue: there are, in fact, objective truths and the continuation of life means that decisions have to be made. In today’s society, few people have the luxury of stasis – if you don’t make decisions, someone will make them for you. That is exactly what is happening today – people are being shamed into submission by other people who have set themselves up do decide for you. Their power rests, not in any special knowledge, but in their ability to shame you and shut you up. They work to deny you the very right to exist. René Descartes, the brilliant 15th century French philosopher, mathematician, and writer formed this statement: “Cogito ergo sum”, translated into English, it is “I think, therefore I am”.

Whatever your political stand or position, don’t allow others to force you to become a non-entity. Think. Challenge. Use reason. Develop a talent for logic. Debate. Argue. Stand up for what you believe. Take nothing at face value.

Make a difference.