Axiomatic Minds

As I flit from one forum to another across the political spectrum, I'm struck by the paucity of moderate views. Almost everyone writes with little desire to explore complex issues and by inviting dialogue so as to illuminate areas of dispute. Instead, you have people who have axiomatic minds looking for reasons to support their prejudices or reasons to ridicule the prejudices of others. And so we have the clash of ignorant armies on the darkling plain of the internet.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1851)