Don't believe anything in this blog:
Be critical of everything you have read. Do your own research. Do your own thinking. Come to your own conclusions. Don't repeat things unless you have truly studied them or experienced them for yourself. If the evidence suggests other wise, disregard what is written here. Look in detail at the arguments of those who disagree with you. Empathise with their viewpoint. Engage in a dialogue and debate with your adversaries and be prepared to change sides if that is the rational and reasonable thing to do. Don't hold on to a belief or theory out of habit or familiarity or fear of change or fear of having to admit you got it wrong or out of a sense of loyalty.
Looking to youth to bring about change:
Adults do of course have experience on their side and when we are young we can be very naive and say and do things we will later, quite rightly, be a bit embarrassed about and some things we will truly regret. But youth has many advantages and it's important not only for yourself but for the world as a whole that young people do things differently and idealistically and radically. Adults are largely stuck in their ways, they generally think that they know just about everything that there is to know, or at least everything that it is worth knowing. They are of course spectacularly wrong about this.
Knowledge and experience are like an expanding circle, the bigger it gets, the more knowledge and the more experiences you have, the greater is the opportunity to know and experience even more. As the circumference of the circle increases the greater the awareness of the unknown and the yet to be experienced becomes. There is never an end, you will never know everything, you will never have experienced everything, but there is a danger that one day you will think that you know enough and have experienced enough and your circle will stop expanding, and whilst you may feel you have settled for a big enough circle, if it isn't continually pushed further out it will begin to shrink and you will become rigid in your thinking and inflexible in your outlook on life.
So be careful you do not become adulterated as you become an adult, remain pure, innocent, fresh and continually challenge yourself to explore more of life.
Why do beliefs so often undermine the facts?
Most people like to think that they are rational, reasonable and intelligent people. We prefer to portray ourselves as making decisions based upon careful consideration rather than emotional impulse, most of the time. There are however two things that get in our way, two things we are very reluctant to acknowledge.
Rationalisation:
Check yourself next time you make a decision about something. Do you justify to yourself why you made that decision? Our justifications will invariably be an appeal to reason, we tell ourselves that given the circumstances it was the rational thing to do. However if we are really honest with ourselves our decisions are most often, at least in part, based on emotional responses stemming largely from fear and ego.
Rationalisation is a very versatile tool as if you think about it you can come up with a reason for almost any action. Next time you make a decision and catch yourself rationalising why you made that decision, stop for a moment and imagine that you had made a completely different or even contradictory decision. Now see if you can come up with an equally plausible rationalisation for the alternative path chosen. Easily done isn't it.
Logic, whilst in its purest form, gives us the best opportunity we can ever have to get close to an absolute statement about how things actually are, yet somewhat ironically and maybe even paradoxically, it is most often used in a slightly perverted form to justify and find excuses for unreasonable, unjust and irrational acts and beliefs.
The abuse of logic in this way can lead some to think that real true expressions of honesty need to come only from the heart rather than from a logical head. Gut feeling and intuition can cut through the obfuscation of over thinking things.
Of course, as with all things, a balance of both logic and intuition, working with each other not in opposition, is where we find the happy medium and what we should perhaps be striving for. Research has shown that gut feelings work most effectively when people who are already experts in a field make a decision. That is, we need to know our stuff first through mental effort and work by the brain, but then to access the most appropriate bit of information at the right time can best be done by our intuition.
This is analogous to creative performance; only when a dancer or sportsperson has put in the hours of hard work and endless repetitive practice of structured moves can they then let go in the middle of a performance and produce creative and spontaneous bursts of brilliance that can never be taught nor practised.
Cognitive dissonance:
This is when we hold two contradictory ideas at the same time; we will justify one belief or action with one rationalisation, and justify another belief or action that directly contradicts the first with another rationalisation. Our rationalisations therefore keep us in a deluded sense of reasonableness as we ignore the fact that we are holding entirely contradictory positions.
Know your own ignorance and arrogance:
Beware; it is always easier to see the ignorance and arrogance of others than of ourselves. It is a very useful idea to always hold onto the possibility that you may be totally wrong about something, about many things, maybe even about everything!
Be guided by the evidence but be aware that you may be consciously or unconsciously avoiding the evidence that doesn't fit in to your preferred theories and beliefs, and you may also dismiss some evidence on unjustifiable grounds as you desperately seek to hold on to what you believe to be true.
Always be prepared to go where the evidence takes you, like a sceptical but open-minded detective.