“Did you read that piece I sent?” Arjun asked.
Sameer frowned. “Who wrote it?”
“Why?”
“Because that tells me everything.”
“So the argument doesn’t matter?”
“Oh! it does matter,” Sameer said. “All folks who offer opinions always have an agenda.”
Arjun watched him quietly. “So we don’t examine the idea… we examine the person?”
Sameer shrugged. “Background. Bias. That’s how you know.”
Case closed.No thinking required.
We like to believe we are rational.
But most of the time, we are defenders, not thinkers.
Once a belief settles into the mind, it doesn’t stay a belief for long. It quietly becomes identity. And the moment that happens, any opposing idea stops feeling like information.
It feels like an attack.
Not on the argument.
On us.
“Just look at the data,” Arjun said.
“I already know the truth,” Sameer replied.That was the shift.His mind had stopped being a judge.It had become a lawyer.
*Not asking, “What is true?”But, “How do I prove I’m right?”*
So the evidence hunt began:
“I’ve read studies that agree with me.”
“Experts support this.”
“Your source must be flawed.”
And when facts refuse to cooperate?
The mind does what skilled lawyers do.
It bends them.
Reframes them.
Twists them — until they fit the story already believed.
“But you didn’t even consider it,” Arjun said.
“I don’t need to,” Sameer replied. “I know the type.”
That’s the final defense.
If you can’t defeat the idea, discredit the person.
“Who said it?”
“What’s their background?”
“What bias can we label them with?”
Once a label is found, the argument is declared invalid.
Comfort restored. Identity protected.
This isn’t intelligence at work.
This is ego guarding identity.
Psychology calls it confirmation bias — the tendency to search for evidence that supports what we already believe and dismiss what doesn’t. But deeper than that, it’s belief defense. The mind protecting its mental world from discomfort.
Because being wrong doesn’t just feel incorrect.
It feels like losing a piece of who we are.
Arjun said softly,
“You know when real thinking starts?”
Sameer looked at him.
“When something challenges you… and you still choose to look.”
A long pause.
“That uncomfortable feeling?” Arjun added.
“That’s the doorway most of us shut.”
Because growth never comes from defending what we already know. It comes from risking being wrong.
And in that small, silent moment —when we stop arguing and start examining — the mind takes off its lawyer’s coat…and remembers how to be a judge.
In musing………. Shakti Ghosal
A New Beginning 