Well, this post has been on the works for a while, as I constantly rethink it. However, I must post it now, for otherwise it will never get published. Please regard it as thoughts up in the air and don’t worry if you get lost in there somewhere, since its not particularly straight thinking this time.
Human mind is such an amazing and complex thing. I never cease to be bewildered about the manner it works and how different people can be. And how coherent many think their “mind makeup” is. We have this word for it: worldview. The dictionary defines worldview as
1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.
Now these two definitions are very interesting, and there are uses for both meanings. But while it is sometimes useful to ponder the general direction one is taking in his / her views, I think it’s the second definition, that grasps something very important. Or more to the point, its the interplay of these two different meanings, that spurs my thoughts this time – since we are incoherent beings.
We try to make sense of the world and ourselves by compacting the things we see into some meaningful boxes. Especially we do this to other people we meet. Now instead of taking the whole collection of beliefs, we just pick a few of the most dominant (most dominant we see in a particular situation that is) and make it a neat package we can understand. But that ain’t the worldview by a long shot. Its just some cardboard figure we just spawned from our assumptions.
The oblivious live in a world full of cardboard figures.
And it’s not all bad, since simplification does have some very good advantages. But it is the balance of thought that we should seek after – the balance between simple and intricate. Have you met people, that spend most of their time inside the cardboard world? They are people, that are not easily drawn to the complex perspective hunting. They just see a certain kind of a world, but don’t usually stop to ponder it that much. They sneer or utter a laughter, when you try to imply something which doesn’t fit their worldview. If you insist on the matter, and get them to see things in a new way, their whole worldview gets shaken, since its not particularly flexible. Its a huge change for them, a revelation if you will.
Then there are people, who live in a world of constant complexity and change of thought. You cannot shake their thoughts as easily as you can shake the thoughts of the oblivious. They adapt to new thoughts better, but that is not to say they approve every new thought. They understand, that our world, our worldview and our view of others is a complex matter, a collection of beliefs and views, which are sometimes contradicting each other. But this view can be daunting, for it does not give a minute of rest. The constant complexity takes its toll.
And here we come to the interplay of the definitions, since most people are something inbetween of those examples above. There are many grades of complexity, and different people opt to choose different grades, depending on which setting fits them best. Some people choose to close their mind at a certain age and head for the more simple end of the spectrum. I can’t begin to understand all the different reasons they may have for this, as the mind works in such many ways. But i think its important for us to try to see and feel the variance in the world and in the people – including ourselves. Otherwise we miss so much, and in the end we have lived a life without never knowing ourselves or the important “whys” of our existence.
Where is there a good line between simple and intricate, between assuming and wondering, between cardboard figures and a sea of complexity?
) so I thought I’d share it: