Ayn Rand has said:”A contradiction cannot exist. An atom is itself, and so is the universe; neither can contradict its own identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality (For the New Intellectual, p.126).”I believe this statement by Ayn Rand. There are no grays in our thinking. Grayness is usually a delusion we have given a name too ideas we have that we either have and do not fully comprehend or we haven’t completed ideas and their implications in our minds. We cannot adopt an idea unless we can ‘harmonize’ it with the rest of our thoughts. We have a tendency to reject new thoughts and ideas because our minds are so good at defending this concept. We see things that are new as a threat, we may have to admit we were wrong n the past, or we didn’t have all the facts.A mentor of mine, Les Mcguire would say: “If your wrong about something how soon would you want to know?” His follow-up question was always: “Are you sure?” I would guess that almost universally the answer to the first question would be ‘Immediately’ but we are typically not willing to just accept any new concept the first time it comes knocking on our door, that is why Les would ask the second question. We are usually emotionally invested with our ideas from our youth onward. We typically have to study it out in our minds to make sure that a new idea ‘fits in’ with everything else that we think we know.Ayn Rand has also taught me the idea of an active mind. She believed it was impossible for anyone to have a truly open mind. Instead we should have an active mind, a mind that is seeking truth and willing to admit both new truth and dismiss ideas that aren’t truth.Our quest should be to live a life with no contradictions. A majority of the World’s ills are growths from fundamental contradictions, all of which starts in the minds of the individuals.