A New Virtue: Expansiveness

This is an old, widely-accepted virtue: knowing what you believe and standing up for it, even if it is unpopular to do so.

Yeah, I guess it's a virtue. I mean, if you really know what you believe, you might as well stand up for it, rather than just shrugging your shoulders and pretending you don't care.

My commitment to that virtue, though, is fairly dubious, mostly because there's another, sometimes-conflicting virtue that I like better. I call it Expansiveness, and I define it as "having exposed oneself to, and really considered, a wide range of perspectives, happenings, ideologies, subjects, and ways of being human." (I borrowed the phrase "ways of being human" from Richard Rorty.) I like it because it's infinite; you can always become more expansive. Isn't that exciting?! Expansive people are fun to talk to, because they are genuinely interested in what you have to say, they don't condescend, and they are not so caught up in their own web of beliefs to consider something new. You can tell when you talk to them that their minds are works-in-progress, that they are actively thinking and not just chewing on the same old dogma. Then, when they tell you what they believe, you can trust that they have done their research, thought it through, and considered a good number of opposing viewpoints.

Best of all, in talking with them, you yourself become more expansive, because you are taking advantage of the thinking they have already done.