Challenging Our Biases Before Challenging Others

Hi everyone, it’s Gary here with SomewhatRead.

I recently shared a clip from Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday show about homelessness and affordability in California. I found it through a post from Rick Caruso, but the commentary itself was Zakaria’s.

What struck me was that my first reaction was defensive.

I live in Los Angeles. I love California. And when people criticize how we’ve handled homelessness, part of me wants to push back immediately.

But because the criticism was coming from someone I respect and regularly watch, I stopped myself and listened.

And that’s exactly the point.

Sometimes information challenges our assumptions, our politics, our identity, or the place we call home. Our instinct is to defend. But what if, instead, we got curious?

That doesn’t mean we automatically agree. It means we take the argument seriously enough to examine it.

I think one of the biggest challenges we face today is that we’ve become conditioned to treat information that conflicts with our views as a personal attack. Too often, we defend our side before we’ve fully considered the argument.

I’m trying to do something different.

When I repost something, it’s because I find it genuine, thoughtful, or worthy of deeper consideration—even when it doesn’t align with my existing views. I’m not sharing it as an endorsement. I’m sharing it as an invitation to think.

That’s what I’m trying to do with SomewhatRead: challenge my own biases before challenging someone else’s.

I hope you’ll join me in that process.