Slowing The Roll, Drastically

    Most of us are at one time or another dogmatic. By that I mean we all can get to a point where we believe something is true, without a single fact to support the assertion, and nobody nowhere, no how, can change our mind about the belief.

    Being dogmatic is far from limited to people who are bereft of a formal education, or who are devoid of any appreciable intellect.

   In my experience quite the opposite is true - the more educated and intellectual types are nearly almost always as readily dogmatic about something or another as those that would be considered less than average.

   It seems to me there is no shortage of people who find it impossible to say "I don't know" - they come from all walks of life and are representative of every race, creed, gender identity and cereal preference.

   Saying "I don't know" about some things would seem to be a no brainer, but such is not the case. I meet people all the time who adamantly state they have a fair grasp of a subject or know something about some historical event, and when their info is questioned (or god forbid, proven in error), they get pretty dang defensive.

   Heck, I've even been one of those people on a few occasions. One or a thousand.

   Then one day it hit me like a thousand tons of liverwurst that I was prone to expressing myself dogmatically on stuff I had no business even opening my mouth about, and since that fateful day I've made it something of a crusade to self-censor whenever I'm asked about anything I'm not sure of.

   It hasn't been easy, to be frank. 

   It can especially be a challenge to bite my tongue when I want to expound on matters esoteric (I have a fatal interest in arcane minutiae, which sometimes deludes me into believing I possess knowledge about useless crap when in fact I do not).

   I am still not all that good about saying "I don't know" as often as I should, but I have become fairly good at expressing a caveat before I do make any pronouncements on a subject.

   That caveat is, "I could be wrong, but I think..."

   Not a lot of people like it when I say that, but it does cover my ass a little...at least I think it does. 

   Of course, I could be wrong....