When new ideas are hard: the Backfire Effect

First, here's The Oatmeal, a cartoon source you could totally support: It's worth your time, and nicely colored. Think of this: do you realize your brain puts together a house of cards, and if an idea would knock it down more than it would fit, the Amygdala will create a defensive reaction! It's why, when you hear something horrible about someone you respected, your mind screams "No way!" This is why, when you connect a practice- like say, mask-wearing during the pandemic- to someone's Cherished Beliefs, you get strong reactions. If I have to violate my core beliefs- as I see them - to believe this new thing, I reject it.

My own response over time has been to leap across the Void. My convictions as a person, and my action upon them, are life-tested. I have been trying to find new practices, habits, whatever fits my interest, because there are so many ways I think I can live and grow and even help more than I could before. I've had to challenge so many fundamental assumptions, I cannot hope to cover it here in timely fashion. But I know it's terrifying, if you're honest with yourself. Sometimes, two sides of opinions are based on half a world of distance in world experience. Maybe we never can know too much, but there's a biological basis- an ordeal- that means, many, many people will not add new information, regardless of the consequences, and we don't know what to do about it.

If you understand those sorts of obstructions lying out in the world, though, your peace can re-emerge, regardless, because you acknowledge the truest form of reality available to your senses. We may all be One beneath Identities, yet, educating adults about difficult topics is such a marshland on which to try to build, because we're biologically disposed, it seems, to take a few sources attached to a thing and make it Gospel if it suits us, but quite hesitant, if not revolted, when confronted with legitimate sources of information which leads to a result, whose acceptance is a bitter pill.

We're talking about this and related matters. I am curious about the path of my Cherished Values. I think some difficulty arose in the areas where I had never been introduced to further ideas, but my combination of those new frontiers and the values of my childhood make my unique adult identity, which is pretty decent at weighing new information ( climate change etc). In a way I consider the values I found via conviction ( Peter David wrote an essay that became my language on this) more My Own. But it is important to recognize your roots and try to be fair and honest about them.

I don't think I lived those values- I know, that's the Christian struggle - but I put so little effort into them back then. I could recite stories and verses and theories, but I needed to Live something. To do that, the ol Amygdala went through some terrifying times. But I got Me. Hey, I'll take it.