When we’re young of age we begin to take in information from our parents without question. It’s the principle of credulity we cling to as a child. We believe everything. As we get older, with the bricks of knowledge we’ve already laid to construct a foundation, we strengthen our beliefs with friendly facts. The wall gets stronger and stronger, and other ideas that oppose it begin to be repelled by it. We begin to reject new ideas if they do not fit into the paradigm of our own brick wall. When we become rigid in our belief system, unable to yeild, we become “functionally fixed” and our mental life begins to only agree with data that conforms to the wall.
This is a dangerous way to live. We should be able to entertain an idea without being forced to believe in it. This is flexing your empathetic powers, and a good thing to be capable of! Furthermore, we should be able to form beliefs, while not being certain about them. I prefer inclinations over absolutes; I prefer glass bricks over granite bricks, that way I can see what’s on the other side of the argument. That way when the paradigm shifts of mysticism, theology, reason, science, and skepticism ebb and flow you can take in what there is to learn and adjust your foundation accordingly. Rigidity can stunt growth during the onslaught of information impeding on you during all the stages of life. If you open your empathetic powers up to let inclinations bend and even break then you’re able to learn from you’re age while learning from history. If you’re able to learn from history, and learn from the present, and stretch further, with prudence, then you have become transhistorical, and are able to sit on the precipice of the mind, seeing beyond time and space, into the wondrous.
Stephen C. Pedersen 