Considering new ideas can be scary. If your current views turn out to be wrong…well, I know from my own experience that having everything you thought you knew turned on its head is upsetting. Messing with your beliefs and values can be traumatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here’s the issue though. Taking a simplistic approach and considering a particular opinion (not a complex system like your entire worldview), your current view may be true, false, or somewhere on the scale between those two. If your conviction is true<\/em>, then you shouldn’t have to be afraid to face other ideas, because they can’t threaten it. The challenge helps reinforce them, and you can defend your reasoning when people argue for the other view you rejected. But if that idea or belief is false<\/em>, why would you want to keep holding it? It may rattle you to find out, yes, but if you want the truth then it wouldn\u2019t make sense to avoid considering another view because \u201cyou might have been wrong.\u201d You need to be able to let go of the original view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What about faulty reasoning, you ask?\u00a0 One belief compared to another may be true, but isn\u2019t the assumption that you\u2019ll always use sound reasoning and come to the right conclusion a bit questionable?\u00a0 I certainly wouldn\u2019t assert that I\u2019m the most logical person around.\u00a0 We are human beings with subjective brains (at least I\u2019m assuming you\u2019re a human – if you\u2019re actually an alien or a cat, feel free to correct me), so that’s a very real risk.\u00a0 It’s better, though, to keep thinking, than to give up the search once you find \u201ca good enough view\u201d because you might come to an incorrect conclusion.\u00a0 Anyway, how do you know that the thinking that led to that<\/em> view is correct, especially if you haven’t given the alternatives fair consideration?\u00a0 Everyone has some sort of worldview, and you’re more likely to reach the correct conclusions if you think through stuff and maybe have a faulty conclusion here and there, than if you don’t attempt to wrestle with ideas at all. You likely will<\/em> come to incorrect decisions along the way.\u00a0 If you keep learning and considering and stretching your brain though, hopefully those mistakes will be corrected as you grow in knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That may not sound very solid, but if we want to try and know the truth about life and the world, we must be willing to accept uncertainty.\u00a0 Life is complicated.\u00a0 In a way, that openness, and the challenge to us humans, is part of the beauty of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Considering new ideas can be scary. If your current views turn out to be wrong…well, I know from my own experience that having everything you thought you knew turned on its head is upsetting. Messing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thinking","tag-new-ideas"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}