Viewpoints

Here is a snippet from an interview with Cory Doctorow talking about writing, changing lives, and the charity Worldreader. This paragraph make me sit up and shout "yes!"...

... the most dangerous thing in the world is someone who has only read one book. The great thing about reading is that you can triangulate your ideas among lots of different authors, different times, or different place. When you read widely and broadly it shows you that everything is relative. It shows that there is a lot of ways of looking at things, and often times, problems can become solutions if looked at creatively.

Having a viewpoint and exposing it to other viewpoints is like getting an innoculation. It will protect you from falling into the hands of an ideologue who will tell you what to think, when to think, where to think, and for how long to think. Ideologues are terrible, dangerous people. Having your own personal viewpoint developed and tested against many other viewpoints gives you immunization from falling under their spell.