Questioning The Mind
Our identity is formed from the opinions we carry. Some of them we are aware of. Most we carry subconsciously, passed down through culture or developed as defense mechanisms.
Women, for instance, are taught to be cautious around strange-looking men. This belief is passed from grandmothers to mothers to daughters, and then onward to others.
Such opinions shape how we see the world and how we perceive it. While some help us lead safer or better lives, many prevent us from exploring the truth. The mind is least interested in truth. That longing belongs to inner consciousness, which seeks something deeper and more fundamental.
The mind prefers fantasy. Anything that pleases the senses. Anything that releases the happy hormone. So we borrow opinions that allow us to answer complex questions with ease. Why are there so many stars, a child might ask. And we respond by saying they are our ancestors.
It is silly and later becomes part of our innocent childhood memory, yet it is a comforting lie we tell children. As children, we have no way of knowing whether it is scientifically accurate, so we believe it. Until, one day, we discover for ourselves what the stars truly are. Then our understanding shifts. We realize our parents did not intend to lie; the truth was simply too complex for our young minds.
But do we apply the same principle when discovering other truths?
We often dislike people who are different from us. We form opinions that are misleading yet align neatly with our worldview. We accept those opinions readily, even those that are clearly false, because they validate what we already believe.
We rarely question their veracity. We call this critical thinking and promote it as a mental model. But stripped down to its essence, critical thinking is simply the willingness to raise questions against an opinion.
We demonize those we dislike so we can justify our hatred. We cherry-pick facts and twist them to fit our beliefs, much like twisting a piece of cloth to fit into a smaller bag. That is not the cloth’s true shape, but fitting it into the bag mattered more.
The mind craves fantasy more than truth, because truth demands that we realign our beliefs again and again. This process repeats until we finally arrive closer to what is true.
The search for truth is painful because the mind must constantly reshuffle itself. At times, this leads to questioning the self, and even questioning the very reality from which we have borrowed our opinions.
The strongest individuals are those who can question themselves. They treat their mind as a sacred space and protect it as such. Only the strong can confront themselves over a flawed opinion. It takes real strength to move away from fabricated lies and realign with truth.
The discovery of truth is not for the weak, the faint-hearted, or the gullible. The greatest battle is with the self, because in this fight you do not have to defeat yourself. You only have to admit that you were wrong. And we all know how bitter that pill is to swallow.