“There’s a world goin’ on Outside the world that I’m in” ~ Blackberry Smoke
I have spoken many times about how amazing the human brain is, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned how we often don’t realize what it is capable of, or how it is performing functions without our ever realizing that it is doing so. Even now, as I sit here typing, my brain is pulling data from multiple regions, then sending signals (kind of like e mails I suppose) along neural pathways to my fingers; which in turn type out what is going on inside my head. All this occurs almost instantaneously; my mind decides what it wants to say, then my fingers type it out; without me giving any thought to the process of how those thoughts get to my fingertips.
The same could be said about almost everything we do throughout our days; from tying our shoes in the morning to operating a motor vehicle; we do it without realizing the multitude of signals our brain is sending out to the various parts of our body. Yet there is one function that goes on inside our minds that, in my opinion, is of much more significance; the process by which we come to hold our worldview. For those of you who may not be sure what a worldview is, it is a comprehensive framework of beliefs, values, and mental models through which a person or society perceives, interprets, and responds to reality. One could say that it is our worldview that tells us what to believe; what is both true and real.
The amazing thing about this is that we never realize it is happening, but from the moment we are born our brain is flooded with data which it begins to process; some of it to be used to navigate through life, while some of it goes towards forming our worldview; how we perceive the world around us
It has been said that by the time we reach 13 years of age our worldviews are pretty firmly established in our minds, and that it takes something monumental, or catastrophic, before our minds consider revising them. Continue reading →