The importance of sharing what you know

No less than the esteemed Nelson Nash personally filled in a gap in my philosophical knowledge: The powerful influence of Leonard Read, co founder of FEE, the Foundation for Economic Freedom (fee.org, @feeonline), on the development of a freedom-minded culture in the US.

Articles on MyFreedomBank.com about my newfound insights from Read will surely come, but this post is about how we actually learn from others. It is not just the specifics of a subject, the detail, but the mere existence of a subject, a person or a train of thought. Then we get interested, investigate and decide for ourselves.
We don’t know what we don’t know.

Perhaps a friend introduced you in high school to a music group or artist you had never heard of, and that recommendation became your passion. My own change came from my best friend handing me a harmless-looking book called Anthem. Kaboom.

Without learning from others what they have learned, we might never be aware of something important. The caution exhibited (or these days, bravery required) in sharing a new idea is as a powerful a form of censorship as book-burning. Sure, no one is afraid of recommending a band. An idea? Well that is a whole other dang deal.

This is not about the 2016 election. As we continue to strive to demonstrate to others the value of freedom over force, the more we share all the books, films, music, authors and ideas we have been lucky to find, the more we make the world we want to see.

Yelling, bumper stickers and social media graffiti of all sorts don’t seem to work.

Want peace and connection? Find something to connect with. It would be hard to find great art that promotes fear or oppression (although Hollywood and TV tries hard to prove me wrong, it also fails to create art). But share a source of joy, and you will be trusted to share other things. Then do it.

When are enjoying together that great music, or talking about that great book, bringing up things like the importance of freedom, real money and honest banking gets a lot easier.