PEOPLE ON THE GUARD OF THE WORLD OUTLOOK

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Day after day, one can observe how in the real and virtual world people fiercely defend their own and attack other people's worldviews. Almost everywhere, where the question of the CORRECT perception of the world or its individual phenomena arises, serious battles flare up. Foreign and domestic politics, gender relations, nutrition, appearance … In general, I do not know a single area of human existence where there would be no reason to start dismantling. Even on the culinary forums, you can see epic battles. Reflecting on this, I began to write a post, and remembered that I had already somehow addressed this topic about three years ago. It looks like the topic remains relevant and I have completed this old article

In my opinion, a person chooses a worldview for himself not because of its persuasiveness and realism (whatever we mean by "reality"), but according to the criterion of satisfying his needs. The personality adjusts the worldview for itself, consciousness structures the observed world in accordance with the existing features of human psychology. If a person borrows any view of the world (and we all start with this, looking at him through the eyes of our parents), then sooner or later he will adapt it. For example, in every era and every person had his own Christianity. In form, it is more or less one, but the believers had and still have their own God. For some - the Punishing Hand, for others - the Good Shepherd. I once saw a medieval statuette of Christ - a crusader (with weapons in hand, of course).

The Chinese were the first to notice this. Confucius stated: "A person can make great the teaching that he professes, but the teaching cannot make a person great." In the Chuang-tsi, a Taoist treatise, one can read: "When a sincere person professes a false teaching, it becomes true, and when an insincere person professes a true teaching, it becomes false."

The adaptation of any teaching "for oneself" occurs precisely because the worldview does not form a person, but serves him. Millions of Germans voted for Hitler in the 1932 elections, not because they were somehow completely flawed, "false", but because the ideology of Nazism healed the psychological trauma inflicted on the Germans by the defeat in the First World War.

However, having adopted this or that worldview / ideology in accordance with his needs, a person begins to adapt himself to it. Consciousness cannot contain all reality at all, it is always selective. And the unconsciously conscious rejection of what interferes, what can shake the worldview begins. Culling is powerful and comes in a lot of detail. For example, from the circle of our friends and acquaintances, those whose worldview threatens ours are often expelled (hence the "divorces" for political reasons). On social networks, we have the ability to filter who we read and who we ignore - and filtering happens all the time. It's the same with information. Recently, I observed the following phenomenon: a feminist, while mentioning acts of teenage violence against a girl, deliberately did not mention that among these bullying teenagers there was a girl (who was also a friend of the victim). This fact interfered with the beautiful concept - and it was dismissed as "irrelevant."

From a large ambiguous text, consciousness snatches out only what fits into the usual worldview schemes. The rest is attacked or ignored. What is the meaning, for example, of such a comment under this or that article: "everything is correct …"? Whoever left this comment studied all the facts and checked all the numbers? Of course not. "That's right" is "consistent with my vision of reality." In the same way, the wording in the style of "the author is a moron" does not say anything about the author, but about the fact that in the life world of a commentator only "morons" can think so. A specific semantic content of the surrounding world is formed. In which "everyone does not like Putin", or "all normal people (and our environment is certainly normal..) think so …". Mirror caps: wherever we look, we are everywhere.

Therefore, it is useless to argue with the worldview - and the forms of its expression, such as religion or secular ideology. A person protects what makes the chaotic external world structured, understandable and clear. Why destroy this pillar? If some information threatens the established perception of affairs, and a person is not ready to change perception, he begins to look for support - from friends, in familiar texts, in communities, and so on. With the lack of confidence in his righteousness displaced from consciousness, a person resorts to very sophisticated methods of defending his position, which, as a rule, work according to the principle of a vicious circle. For example, in feminist communities in LiveJournal, one can notice the following feature: only negative information about men and about the oppression of women is published there. Total selectivity. Exactly the same - in "men's communities", where endless talk about how men are oppressed by women. "Ukropovskie" communities will not write anything good about "vatniks" and will diligently ignore very inconvenient facts; the quilted jacket communities are doing the same. As a result, the following background is formed: if they don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. Complete screening of information, filtering of what does not fit into the scanty picture of the world.

My "favorite" defensive move even has a title: The True Scotsman's Argument. I recently ran into it. In one conversation, a Muslim man told me the already sore mouth phrase that "Islam is a religion of peace, and that no Muslim strives for violence." When I objected and pointed out how many killings are committed in the name of Allah, and that the practice of Islam is currently extremely controversial, the answer was: “Those who do this are not Muslims. True Muslims don't do that.” So easily and naturally, a person left the need to face the dark sides of his religion, preferring to look only in one direction - the light one. But in addition to "true Scots / Muslims" and filtering information, there is also a well-proven devaluation of the interlocutor ("TV box zombie") with an uncomfortable point of view, as well as "hate speech", the essence of which is not to build bridges, but to destroy them by preventing any dialogue.

The worldview changes only when some profound changes take place in a person's personality, and the old structure has become dilapidated and bursting under the pressure of hurricanes from the outside world … And if we continue the metaphor with a mirrored dome, then the old cap has cracked, followed by a new one. But more.

I would conditionally distribute all individual worldviews between the two extreme points. One point is the dialogue (liberal, alternative) worldview, expressed in "there is no truth, there are points of view." Another point is “the truth is, and we know it,” emonological (dogmatic, non-alternative) consciousness. All our individual pictures of the world are located between these poles - someone is closer to one, someone to another. Dialogic consciousness does a worse job of ensuring security, but it makes it possible to interact with other, even alien, life worlds.

Why is it worse? The words of my friend, heard a long time ago, come to mind: “I will not argue with him. What if he convinces me? Making sure that you are wrong about something is an unpleasant thing.

The dogmatic world is good at providing a sense of security, but it makes it very difficult to interact with those who are "not." And if the value of security exceeds the value of interaction and mutual understanding, the monologue world is chosen. And since safety is more important on the scale of needs, we gravitate towards the dogmatic world. Dialogue takes effort.

However, an attempt to look only in one direction also requires remarkable efforts. Think in only one direction, and never listen to others. To create "white noise" from "correct and wise articles" and opinions, think in black and white categories, squeeze all doubts in oneself … Also a lot of work.