I have written about the lack of critical openness in South Africa, which is a crucial skill in academic debate in particular. Another way of putting it is that people so often think that every conversation they are engaged in is finished, final, and irrevocable, not a development or experiment whereby one is testing, experimenting, evaluating, moving. OBSERVATION: I myself need this attitude both as a minister and as an editor. I'll take the editor part. Articles which I edit are part of an ongoing discussion. They are not the final word. This makes a difference both to what is published, and how it is debated.
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