Comment: I pondered a bit about how to do this Venn diagram up right. Rather than present something that represents my own belief system - and the beliefs I question - I thought it wiser to come up with something that can represent the beliefs of anyone - something that can be read in multiple directions.
After all, one person’s garbage is another person’s gospel.
We all like to believe we objectively process information presented to us. We prefer to not think we’ve been conned, confused or otherwise mentally corralled somewhere down the line. I’m no different in that respect.
“Whenever you hear anyone talking about a cultural or even about a human problem, you should never forget to inquire who the speaker really is. The more general the problem, the more he will smuggle his own personal psychology into the account he gives of it,” observed the great psychoanalyst Carl Jung.
This is a species-specific problem. Homo sap is a builder of worlds, in the space between the ears. World views can be anything from benign to bleak, from secular to spiritual, but they must be internally consistent - or at the very least, hang together in some comprehensible way. At their core, they always contain the observer, reporter, unreliable narrator - whatever you prefer to call the singularity of the self.
I’m not arguing for relativism here, however. In the words of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
In any case, nothing is more offensive to our sense of reason, and even our moral sensibility, than a world view that significantly departs from our own. It can be a real pain in the weltanschauung. Here’s a more generalized version of the Venn diagram:
Most of us doggedly stick with our world views, which becomes entangled with our very identity - and we may even double down when contrary information appears. Cognitive biases are tricky things. But of course, ‘they’re for the other guy, not me!’
Rare are those who question themselves, and begin to shift in their world views, on the basis of unpleasant facts. (As someone who wasn’t Mark Twain observed, “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”)
Research psychologists talk of a “meaning maintenance model (MMM)”, proposing “that people have a need for meaning; that is, a need to perceive events through a prism of mental representations of expected relations that organizes their perceptions of the world.” When the meanings we have constructed are questioned, we often feel anxiety and personal threat.
The writer Robert Anton Wilson took a more snarky tact on this matter, reminding his readers that ‘belief system’ can be abbreviated as ‘BS.’ There’s always the disturbing if unlikely possibility that the ‘stranger in the coffee shop insisting in a long conversation’ could well be someone very much like you or me.
As Andre Gide observed, “believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.”
Okay, that was fun. Next week I’ll get back to telling you all what’s absolutely real, undeniably true, and conspiratorially obvious.
This diagram would do well to be taught and fully internalized for the youth still in grace school, before they make their minds up about everything, so they may go through life constantly never making their minds up about anything. Tragic as that could be be, Socrates would approve… though he could be jailed for merely approving of ambivalence
I look forward to a long, not boring conversation with you on how to define 'reality' etc in a real, honest to god coffee shop that I hope doesn't go away while we talk past each other ...