The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. — Helen Keller

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

Author: Helen Keller

Insight: We live in a time where this truth feels almost uncomfortable to sit with. What we're absolutely certain about—the moral clarity that feels self-evident, the way we've figured out how things should be—might genuinely look wrong to people fifty years from now. Not because they'll be smarter, but because the conversation will have moved. The thing we're willing to argue about passionately might become something nobody even questions, or conversely, we might realize we had it backwards. This doesn't mean everything is relative or that we should never take a stand. It means holding your convictions lightly enough to notice when you're wrong, and resisting the urge to assume your current worldview is the final word. History is actually full of examples: ideas about race, gender, what makes someone valuable, what constitutes cruelty. Each generation looked at the previous one confused, sometimes horrified. Each generation was probably also wrong about something without realizing it. The real insight is that being thoughtful today means being humble about tomorrow. It means listening to the ideas that make you uncomfortable—not because you'll necessarily adopt them, but because some version of them might be more right than you think.

Source: The Open Door, p. 93, 1957