Before We Were Born
We think our thoughts are all our own. They’re not. We think we see everything clearly. We don’t. We think that we examine all the stimuli presented to us. Not even close.
We could delve into the all the processes that our beings use to collect information about the world. That would be a very long essay. Let’s just summarize this thought by saying, “You’ll be shocked at how much information your brain chooses to dismiss.” We are wired to identify change and respond to it. Things that are perceived as “normal” are ignored. This is related to survival mechanisms that developed thousands, perhaps millions, of years before we were born.
About that, it’s not only the genetic and biological predispositions of our species that affect our thought processes. The beliefs, attitudes, and cultural practices of our parents, and earlier ancestors are a huge factor as well. Almost all of their experiences occurred, before we were born. The people who are around us when we are very young and learning about our world, pour their perceptions, beliefs, and biases into us. These thoughts form the basis of our perceptions and biases as we make our earliest explorations outside our family home.
Then, we encounter new people who have their own sets of influences, beliefs, cultural practices and biases. They may see the world very differently than us. Some of us seek to understand these strangers. We try to learn new things from them and share our knowledge with them. Far too many people quickly reject these strange ideas. Many people have been taught by their childhood “influencers” that there are things that are “right” and things that are “wrong”. Since our loved ones would never mislead us about what is right, these strangers who do things differently must be "“wrong”. This is where the mistrust, hatred and violence begins.
This is where we begin to waste incredible amounts of energy in negative, unproductive, even destructive pursuits. How do we avoid this trap? It’s not easy.
While we can’t do anything about our generic and biological “wiring”, we can be aware of it and spend some time observing ourselves, noticing the stimuli that gains iur attention. Perhaps, try meditation to clear our busy minds to see what other stimuli might enter our consciousness.
The single most important tool at our disposal for addressing indoctrinated biases is to think! The single most important word in this process is “Why?”.
We basically strip away all our beliefs and rebuild by asking ourselves why we believe the things we do. This is a very detailed process that requires a lot of information gathering and soul searching. We may be surprised at how many of our closely held beliefs we can’t even explain. They were simply someone else’s beliefs, probably someone we loved and trusted.
Life is busy. Information and situations come at us faster and faster. The people who preceded us, for the most part, did the best the cold, with the resources avaiable to them. They formed perceptions, beliefs and biases that helped them survive, that helped their tribe progress. People who have developed “mind sets” that have worked for them are very reticent to change. You know, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. However, clinging to old ideas in a rapidly changing world can cause problems too.
Look around at how religions, nations and even sub-groups within nations fight with each other. They are all clinging to their survival beliefs in a world that is changing far faster than they can evolve.
There are major problems ahead for mankind, perhaps insurmountable problems. We’ll never solve them by refusing to be open and introspective. We can only survive and thrive as a species is we replace our tone of judgement with one of wonder and understanding. Understanding only comes through asking questions. The most important question that we can ask ourselves is “Why, do I believe this?”. Likewise, we must ask others why the believe as they do.
Remember, most of the information in our lives consists of labels our species has created. Most of what we are told are the things that humans MADE UP, before we were born. We must question everything, then question it again. It is tempting to latch onto a set of beliefs and coast through life. It has also proven to be quite dangerous. There is a better way. It just requires all of us to care enough about truth to do the work.