This got bumped down really quickly so I want to give it a second chance....that makes me sound needy. Hmm. I just may be.

Angloesque,

This is excellent.

Many people see this world in 'black and white'. I have certainly been guilty of it at times and have written blogs on it, though more often than not I remove them afterwards. There are very few things in this world that are black and white. But other peoples attitudes affect our own. Say you see an issue on the whiter shade of grey, then you read an article which says the issue is black. Your immediate reaction (depending on how emotive the subject matter is) is to say no the issue is white and you find yourself defending a position more stridently than your original views called for. The grey area is also 'the fence' and fence sitting, in many peoples minds is a crime, e.g. George Bushs 'you are either for us or against us' line.

I remember seeing a tv ad in the UK for one of their newspapers. It showed the same scene twice but from different angles. The first appeared to show a 'thug' (shaved head, tattoos, ripped jeans etc.) running at an old lady and tackling her to the ground. The obvious implication was that he was mugging her. The second shot was a wider angle which showed the same scene but this time you saw that the old lady was walking past a building site. Just above her, but unseen by her, part of a brick wall starts to collapse and will obviously fall on the lady. The 'thug' sees the danger, runs at the old lady and tackles her to the ground out of the way of the danger.
It was a 30 second ad with no dialogue and the fact that I saw this ad 10 years ago and still remember it shows just how effective it was.

I don't know if you have done much experience in travelling but it is even worse than education at expanding the grey areas.

All I can say is please stay in the grey area, there are too few of us there already.

As you can tell by my name I am all about the grey areas and being able to see that what is "right" for me, isn't necessarily "right" for someone else. I find the more I learn about an issue, the more shades of grey appear. That's not to say I don't hold stances on issues, I do. It is just that they rely heavily on conditions and caveats.

As for what has higher education done for me...it introduced me to multitude of people who think and process information in different manners. It allowed me to coexist with people who had views wildly different from my own, and made me question my beliefs. It turned my world upside down, but in doing all that I learn that "what" we believe doesn't matter as much as "how" we choose to demonstrate our belief. It takes several really heated college debates on religion and politics to learn the skilll of peaceful debating, and respecting your opponent. At the end of the day, higher education (but not in the classroom, I might add) helped me to understand and respect other people's culture and beliefs even if I didn't agree with them; it moved me from the level of "tolerance" to "acceptance." Of course, all of this is still challenged on a daily basis and sometimes I fail.

Sort of off topic and nit-picky: the opposite of pro-life is pro-choice, not abortion. It's semantics, for sure, but the implication of the juxtapositioning reflects negatively on pro-choicers. Of course, that may have been your intention.

Oh my god, Gerry, traveling is a huge point. I always thought that third world countries, for example, need missionaries and the Red Cross and the Mercy Corps, yadda yadda, to "advance." Then I worked as a student missionary (and I use the term loosely) in Fiji for a while. They didn't need us. They got along just fine and if anything, we were denigrating their way of life by introducing computers and other electronic equipment. The one good thing we did was provide medical help...good for the three months we were there, and then who carried on after we left? If anything, they ministered to us far more than we to them, and looking back, I've become very cynical toward so-called missionaries. But had I never gone there, I'd probably still be supporting them. (I do support my friends who go to teach elementary school, but not the ones who go to preach.)

Shadesofgrey, thanks for the correction. Me type too fast, though I usually edit obsessively. You said "I find the more I learn about an issue, the more shades of grey appear." Too true. That's exactly my problem, and then it just makes the stupid fence all the wider. And then it gives me a feeling of superiority: I've researched this and I know that there isn't an easy answer, so everyone who sees the issue in black and white is, in my mind, a simpleton. (I hate my own arrogance.) But then it's not like I'm able to provide any answers...all I can do is stay bogged down in the problem. Not a fun cycle.

This last year was interesting for me, though, since I taught college freshmen and we went through several series' of debates. You could see the people who listened and the people who didn't. Fun fact: Majority of students at our school are conservative; huge majority of faculty are not. The first set of debates was very heated; but after people got to be on the receiving end of that, the second round was much more tolerant. I felt gratified that at least my students had moved from unpleasant to semi-pleasant.

Also sort of off topic: The first word I ever misspelled was "gray." I spelled it "grey" because I'd been reading some books by a Canadian author and that's how they spell it. So now I have a deep appreciation for others who do that.

I was under the impression that both "grey" and "gray" were acceptable spellings. I remember feeling stupid that I couldn't remember which was correct so I looked it up and found both were okay...

Lord Shitzu--Critical cognitive abilities having not developed at the age of 7, apparently I went to the School of Educational Fascism and didn't think to consult a dictionary. Speaking of education....

I was under the impression that both "grey" and "gray" were acceptable spellings

I always thought 'grey' was the English spelling and 'gray' was the American.

Sort of off topic and nit-picky: the opposite of pro-life is pro-choice, not abortion.

Shades, I don't see this as nit-picky, it is a very important distinction.

I think, if anything, uni (the local equivalent of college) has made me more certain about my beliefs than they were before. I've majored in international relations, so generally it has only reinforced my belief that most of the people responsible for interactions between states are amoral bastards with the integrity of sliced cabbage. Studies in Asian nations and Linguistics have increased my belief that there is always more than one cause and one solution to every problem, with the main differences being in the amount of bloodshed.

A long time ago someone told me that evil begins wherever people begin to think of others as things or numbers. Everything else may be grey, but the way I see it there is a distinct line between black and grey at the very least.

What has higher education done for me except make me more anti-immigration and less sympathetic of poor people? I don't really know.
The world is shades of gray, but I still see it in black and white, although I acknowledge that my black and white is much different from everybody else's, and that mine is as subjective and inaccurate as everybody else's.