At first, this struck me as a semi-effective slogan. It's memorable, sticks with you a little bit, but crumbles upon closer scrutiny. But the more I think about it, it is a nice metaphor, and not simply for the reasons intended.

I've struggled with what it means to have an open mind. It's a pompous illusion to walk around believing your mind is open to anything, free of associations and prejudices from a life-time of experience. But an open-mind, when used in the sense of giving things a chance or trying to catch yourself when jump to conclusions, is a nice goal.

A parachute is not always open. It needs to be densely contained in a specific, organized way prior to being deployed in order to do its work. Once it is deployed, it is true that it only works when open. But it actually works by creating resistance. It is tethered to its load through a fixed, rigid system, and this allows it to create the drag necessary to keep the body from plummeting haplessly to the earth.

An open-mind is a good thing, but still needs to be boundaried. Believing the aggressive cure-all claims of your chiropractor, for example, is not a good thing. Believing everything the clerk tells you at the health food store is not a good thing. Believing something because it was said with self-righteous authority by one of those awful hens from The View is not a good thing. An open mind should be willing to hear anything but can only offer fall protection when tethered to a measure of skepticism and reason.

So, nice expression, nice metaphor.