This applies to religion as well. IMO those who chose to see reality through the lens of Budda, Krishna, Vishnu, Jehovah, Yahweh, Muhammad, Abraham, Jesus, Santa and of course The All Mighty and Powerful Easter Bunny - are only seeing pieces of a vast multidimensional puzzle. They all might be right, at least partially - but unfortunately they are all also wrong to reject all the other pieces simply because they haven't yet discovered how they "Fit".
Also biochemically, even if we could "see everything" we really wouldn't know what to do with it all. We don't have the capacity to store everything we might learn, see or experience (except for those annoy people with total memory recall like that rat-bastard David Duchovny). Our brains triage information, discarding the trivial and keeping the vital. That which is more comfortable and familiar is easily recalled, that which is in conflict with what we believe - is forgotten and ignored.
Still the true problem is that the uncertainty unknowing is so frightening.
Terrifying.
In order to comfort ourselves against the reality of our un-knowledge we seek to construct among the threads and fragments of the fact-lets our limitations allow us to grasp a ragged facsimile of the world around us. From the time we are toddlers on were are hard at work weaving our Afghan Fact Rugs of protect us from the cold hard reality filled world.
Thus, we have the origins of The Shield which by adulthood has often grown hard and crusted.
It's why Copernicus was shunned and held under house arrest by the church for daring to state the Fact that the Earth was not the Center of the Universe. Those who dare to challenge one thread of our well constructed Shield must be dealt with swiftly and harshly or else - it just might completely unravel.
And we can't have not now can we?
Oh yes, we can - and we will.
What I've described here for those who see through my almost clever little analogies is The Paradigm Effect. Or more specifically Paradigm Paralysis.
What is paradigm paralysis? Or more basically, what is a paradigm?
As you probably know, a paradigm is a model or a pattern. It's a shared set of assumptions that have to do with how we perceive the world. Paradigms are very helpful because they allow us to develop expectations about what will probably occur based on these assumptions. But when data falls outside our paradigm, we find it hard to see and accept. This is called the PARADIGM EFFECT. And when the paradigm effect is so strong that we are prevented from actually seeing what is under our very noses, we are said to be suffering from paradigm paralysis.
Here we have the definition for the syndrome that we as Reality Warriors frequently confront. We are well armed with our lethal facts and figures - yet the opposition is virtually immune to all of them. They are in Paradigm Paralysis, unable and unwilling to grasp any new information which may contradict with that which they have already come to accept and have woven into their belief system. They're immune and impervious to fact and reason. That one little crucial factoid that we'd love hurl like a spitball at the back of the teacher's head is doomed to bounce off her bouffant like pebbles on a deflector grid array.
Weapons have no effect Captain, they're shields are too strong!
So the next obvious question is how do we pull a U.S.S. Defiant and get them to voluntarily drop shields?
Well, you see - there's a weakness in them, a flaw - it's call the Paradigm Shift. The Reality Shield created by Paradigm Paralysis may seem impervious, but it is not. Eventually, under the weight of undeniable fact, it cracks and shifts to accommodate and absorb the newly found information into it's Reality Template. Reality (or rather our limited perception of it) is elastic and can bend to accept new information, each time growing one step closer to completing the puzzle and one step closer to that distant horizon of understanding.
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