Examples in this article demonstrate that even the most erudite people cannot control their own emotions enough to look at their beliefs in an objective manner. No one wants to admit they do not have the whole truth and nothing but the truth. However, we cannot validate our worldviews without the help of people who don't agree with us!
Every new discovery either obviates or modifies a previous discovery. We must avoid grounding our favorite assumptions in mental cement. Four million gene switches that reside in bits of our body were dismissed by the early Genome Project as "junk" DNA. With more research, "they turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave." The truth is that yesterday's assumptions always change.
Can Worldviews Be Changed
Yes, they can, but not by the popular media we label as opinion shapers. They primarily serve to stoke the conflicts among existing mindsets. The worldviews discussed here are formed by much more intimate influencers who can exercise existential-level power.
Individual shifting to a different worldview does occur, but it happens only in a minority of believers. Such shifting usually happens when people are exposed to an environment that is inconsistent with key elements of their childhood environment. But, after some years, many return to their status quo ante, particularly when in stressful situations.
Today we can link these adult-to-child-transmitted worldviews with particular behaviors. But we do not yet understand how adult-level, abstract ideas can gain such power over our minds. To do so, we must figure out how the emotional base of the brain (as in the amygdala) becomes entrained with its mental counterparts (as in the prefrontal cortex).
Meanwhile, we're ignorant about how such embedded beliefs can be consciously modified in a way that supports continual expansion of one's worldview perspective.
What role does experiencing incontrovertible evidence play? What emotional state is most conducive to reshaping life-long beliefs? Can one regularly reevaluate them?
Neuroscience is making some progress mapping the complex neuronal networks involved. In the future we may be able to develop approaches that engage people in learning to transfer their own belief-based existential emotions to new beliefs.
But the species is very pressed to find ways to live together on a path that leads to a different global future. While searching for a neuroscience holy grail, society can't wait.
Some evidence suggests that at any age of consciousness one can become an active participant in changing his or her assumptions about how the world works. This means the worldviews of any group (whoever they are) cannot be changed without their willing participation in the process. In order to create a climate suitable to basic-belief changes in others we must be willing to submit ourselves to the same conditions.
A recent social media event is relevant here: On Marc Kuchner's blog--in reaction to Bill Nye's YouTube comments about teaching evolution to nonbelievers--Patrick Donadio suggests "that you can't change someone's opinion by trying to force--push--them to change. You can change their view by inviting--pulling--them to change."
Progress toward a more inclusive and validated view of the human scope of knowledge starts with descriptions of the basic worldviews of all major cultural groups. How they fit into the human story must be documented. Unproven assumptions in worldviews like creationism, accidentalism, scientism, spiritualism, materialism, etc. must be identified.
I sadly write this on 9/11 as a former U.S. diplomat learning of the assassination of our ambassador and other embassy staff members in Libya. I believe these and innumerable other worldview-caused deaths are due to the failure of the three Abrahamic religions to re-examine the real basis of their ethereal supernaturalism.
All professionals who seek to explain history and its effects on human behavior and fail to continually correct their interpretations based on new data are parties to such wars.
Big Picture Needed
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