It all began with an enduring hobby, our interminable family arguments that only seemed to be about one subject. Each position became immutable once chosen.

The disputes boiled and embroiled more than just immediate family. It seethed between generations, festered within same generations, sulked between family and neighbors, and churned between family members and complete strangers. It seduced one’s attention with a sort of ongoing immediacy. It seemed, at times, to be the only thing deserving common importance. That everybody got involved made it omnipresent, which induced a state of high alertness in those of us who would otherwise have paid it no attention. The youngest of us wished it would simply go away, until the day came when we’d find someone to disagree with about it and then we, too, drowned our senses in its ominous flood.

It took on a life of its own, with the power to immerse us without our anticipation. It concerned itself with what were called ‘new ideas’ (works of the Devil) against ‘the old ways’. The New Ideas seemed to have the backing of very prominent people, those whose recognized high standards made them doubtful sources of deception, and who seemed to be independently closer to agreement with each other than did those who supported The Old Ways.

That interested me, for I could see how finding a source of agreement could put an end to the perpetual argument that kept us too distracted to be good at other rigorous efforts required by life. So, you see, I wasn’t born with this lifetime mission. It was handed me by the argument, and all the people involved in it, and the fact that I had to discover which side, if any, I should take. I wanted to be right.

No, more than that: Everybody claimed to be right. I wanted to be correct.  I knew what felt right, of course, but taking that side put me at odds with too many people I depended on for my existence, who were not afraid to make me feel afraid of them. I wondered about too many things. That kept me in trouble, not the kind of vandals or thieves, but of the kind regarded as being sacrilegious, as of a person who asked too many dangerous questions of an unapproved nature. My first efforts became those of someone who wished to discover whose side he should be on, in this lifetime dispute which seemed (then) to be so important to everybody.

I wondered about certain things, with questions I learned not to ask: If the newer ideas were more correct, why did the older people hold onto The Old Ways so vehemently, often to the point of violence? Also: If they were more correct, why did some of the younger people also choose The Old Ways when they took their stand in the ongoing argument? And then: If the New Ideas were more correct, why did new discoveries seem to keep eliciting an onslaught of ‘Even Newer Ideas’ which seemed to void what then became the old, while the old became more ancient?

It is a process which, in my lifetime, has never stopped or slowed, but seems to have achieved a state of constant acceleration which has filled the pool of human knowledge beyond the puddle of it we had in my youth (where some people could seem to know everything), until it has become a vast ocean whose students are scattered across its surfaces and immersed in its deepest depths, speaking their own languages with which they write their books, with no amount of understanding to span the islands that maroon them.

I felt like a boy who had found a secret radio, upon whose antenna I could pick up secret messages just by opening a book borrowed from the town library. I knew things would someday have to change.

Still, The Old Ways persevered with adherents who refused to give them up. I often had cause to wonder: If they all are right, and they all disagree one with another, is this not an impossible situation? Why do people cling to the obsolete, especially when their only support for it is the vehemence with which they defend it?

More new questions showed up faster than I could learn answers for the old. One, which I learned to deem important, was: If The Old Ways were so right their adherents would cling to them with fury that grew sometimes vicious, why did I discover Even Older Ways against whose adherents they also turned their vitriol? Did not The Old Ways compare to the Even Older Ways in a manner very similar (though in reverse) of the way they also compared to the New Ideas, and the New Ideas to the Even Newer Ideas? How was a person to know what is most correct? By what method could anyone discover what is true among all these disparate, desperate notions?