Are our beliefs really TRUE? What lies underneath these beliefs?
Knowledge can be a barrier to understanding. We try to filter new information through what we already know, making it fit with our already-formed mental file folders. There is a natural resistance to dismantling those long-standing files. We cling to our system of understanding the world around us.
These systems form our identity, life choices, and behavior. We may go to a particular church, form particular friendships, act in specific ways and attend local events… all because of how we were taught to think or because of our mental framework of how the world operates.
It isn’t a big deal to admit that we were wrong about a fact… that building isn’t the largest in the world anymore, or someone went to a different college than we thought originally. We can revise that individual file folder or even toss it into the recycling bin. However, if a new piece of information arrives that does not fit into our system of beliefs and knowledge, it may get blocked. Why?
Climate change. Fascism intruding upon our democracy. Science. What is appropriate in public discourse. Morality in general.
I am fairly sure that a large portion of our country is experiencing this resistance right now. New ideas are being perceived as harmful… they go against long-standing structures they know to be true. Perhaps they were true for a long while, but new information is trying to flow into those systems, and it’s getting blocked. Millions are pretending a systemic national problem does not exist, ignoring injustice and hatred, simply excusing the president’s many insulting remarks because they don’t fit with what they believe to be true.
Is it fear? It can be frightening to face the fact that who you have been may not be who you are now or who you want to be going forward.
What will it take to allow truth in? What will it take to allow us rise above our fixed mental constructs and resistance?
