Being Reactive to New Ideas

In the last post, I mentioned that you can face new ideas with one of two predispositions. You can be reactive or proactive. A reactive person resists new ideas until the support for them is so overwhelming that they have no choice but to accept them. The primary benefit of this approach is that you don't have to accept every silly idea that comes along. New ideas often come along like fads and die out just as quickly. The reactive person invests no time or energy in these ideas until they have clearly proven their worthiness. The problem, of course, is how much evidence is required to prove the worthiness of an idea?

At one extreme if the person does not require much evidence before accepting a new idea, then they are really just being a proactive person but not doing it very well. At the other extreme, they may be way out of step with the people around them having failed to accept ideas that have become mainstream.

Personally, I would find it difficult to be a reactive person for two reasons. First, I would find it hard to know when it is time to give in. And, second, I would find it difficult to have to finally give in to an idea that I had resist for a long time. Further, I would find the idea of having to continually adjust and give in to new ideas difficult. But that is me and others may be different.

I would think that being reactive would be a good approach for one who is living in static times. However, for one who is living in dynamic times where things are constantly changing, this would be a strain. I would think that for dynamic times such as the present that being proactive to new ideas would be a lot easier on a person. And that is what I will turn to in the next post.

A Willing Suspension of Disbelief

I borrowed this phrase from William Coleridge who said that the enjoyment of fiction requires "A Willing Suspension of Disbelief". In other words, you have to believe, at some level, that the fictional representations are or could be true. If you read fiction with skepticism, you may fail to fully appreciate the literary experience. However, I would also like to apply this phrase to the advancement of knowledge.Which, in my opinion, also requires a willing suspension of disbelief.

At any given moment in time, most of what most people believe is not fully true or possibly out right wrong. We are constantly changing, updating and modifying our shared bodies of knowledge. These changes can come in huge jumps like Newton's theory of gravity or Einstein's theory of relativity. And they can come in little hops like the decision to exclude Pluto as a planet. Personal knowledge changes as well. Anyone can attest from their own personal experiences that things that they used to believe no longer seem to hold. The question is - how do we get from one position on what we believe to be true to another position on what we believe to be true?

It seems to me that this can be done, generally, in one of two ways: proactively or re actively. We do it re actively when we simply cannot hold an old view any longer. We do it proactively when we allow for the fact that new evidence may arise and that we may have to change our minds about some things. If we are being really proactive, we can anticipate the implications of new information and consider what might possibly be true as a result. And if we wish to be proactive, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief.

I am not going to judge whether it is better to be proactive or reactive. This is probably a matter of personal taste, personality, disposition, flexibility and any number of other things. I can say that for me, the preference is very much in the proactive camp. I prefer to know what might be true long before it becomes established. However, for the sake of fairness, I am going to look at the pros and cons of being reactive versus being proactive. Then I will develop an example - apocalyptic thinking. Yes, it could be true.

Believing Fiction

Last week's suggestion for improving you mental flexibility was pretty straightforward - just continue to expose yourself to new ideas. This week's suggestion is going to be a little further out there.

Next time you read a work of fiction, try an convince yourself that the story is actually true. This is not too difficult if it is a romance or detective fiction. Such things could actually happen and many times are based on true stories. However, what about horror or science fiction? Could you convince yourself that Stephen King's The Stand or Micheal Crichton's The Andromeda Strain really happened? Could you convince yourself that either is based on a true story?

Actually, the premise of The Andromeda Strain (a lethal microbial life form was brought back to earth on a space probe) is plausible. So, is the premise of The Stand (the military experiments with a deadly virus which escapes into the world). Since they are plausible, they could have really happened. Why wouldn't you have heard about them? Well, there are lots of reasons why such events might be covered up. As you look for explanations to support your claim that these things really did occur, you find that it isn't that difficult to come up with plausible scenarios. In fact, this is what conspiracy theorists do all the time.

The point here is not to make you paranoid or to turn you into a conspiracy theorist. The point is to show you that, with the proper motivation, it is not that difficult to convince yourself of something. And, if you managed to convince yourself of something here that you know is not true, how many of the other things that you believe to be true are nothing more than things you have convinced yourself of in the past for various reasons.

For any given person, much of what they believe to be truth is, in fact, not true. George Washington never did cut down a cherry tree. And the people in Columbus's Day did not believe the world was flat. Many of you believed, at some point, that Pluto was one of the nine planets. Similarly, for any given person, some of what they believe to be false, is, in fact, true. Nobody has it all exactly right. But your mind, vulnerable to inflexibility, will lead you to believe that you do have it exactly right. Hopefully, the mental exercise described here will help you maintain greater flexibility and allow you to update your view of the world as new information comes along.

Receiving New Ideas

There is an oft told zen story about a student who is frustrated with his inability to grasp the ideas that his master is trying to teach him.

"I am just not getting it," the student complains to the master, "what should I do?"

The master invites the student to sit and offers him some tea. The student accepts the offer and the master begins to pour tea into the students cup. The cup fills and begins to overflow onto the table.

"Master," the student exclaims, "My cup is full."

"That is your problem," the master replies, "your cup is full."

When your mind is full of things, you cannot receive new ideas. It is too full of the old ideas. And the longer the old ideas stay in there, the harder is it to replace them with new ones. This is a problem because the world is constantly changing and it is necessary to accept new ideas in order to keep up with it. After a while you become very rigid in your views. They become more inconsistent with the world around you. And you can find fewer and fewer people who would agree with you on things. So, what do you do.

Well, the answer is fairly simple, actually. You have to be diligent in your acceptance of new idea. When you read the newspaper, for example, instead of reading it from the perspective that they are all idiots and you are the only one who really knows what is going on, read it from the perspective that there may actually be something in there to be learned. That doesn't mean to just naively accept everything. But it does mean to give it a fair chance.

And, that is only a start. You should seek out new ideas and new ways of looking at things. Read books, take classes, explore new ideas. Watch movies and TV shows that you would not normally be attracted to. It has to be an active effort.

Just like you have to get off the couch and get some exercise, you have get out of the valley your mind has settled into and exercise it with some new ideas. New ideas are the key to mental flexibility and it takes effort to achieve it.

Keeping Your Mind Sharp and Agile

Over time our thinking become very rigid. Our minds shrink wrap around the things we know and resist letting in new ideas. This is not good for most people and for academics it is a disaster. It would be analogous to a professional athlete becoming soft and doughy from lack of exercise. Fortunately for professional athletes their careers are relatively short and when the natural effects of aging set in, they no longer have the demands of their profession to deal with. However, for academics this is not the case. Academics can continue to practice their profession well into old age. We have a comedic archetype of an aging academic reading from yellowing pages of notes lingering for years at deaths door while continuing to deliver lectures. This archetype is a bit unfair. But, it is not unheard of to have academics continue to work well into their 70's or even 80's. So, the question is - how do you keep your mind nimble and sharp and resist the forces of aging?

Well, part of the answer is that many academics don't. Some begin their careers fixed in their views and some acquire the rigidity over time. However, this is unfortunate and not necessary. It is possible to remain nimble and flexible in your thinking. And it is not a great deal different from maintaining physical flexibility.

In the absent of any efforts to combat inflexibility, our bodies become inflexible over time. Muscles shorten and we loose our range of motion. We combat this by stretching. And the same thing is true of mental flexibility. We combat it by stretching our minds. I would add, parenthetically, that we also become inflexible emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and in any number of other ways. The remedies there are the same - stretching. But, I am going to limit my discussion to mental flexibility.

Over the next few weeks I am going to look at three ways to maintain mental flexibility: exposure to new ideas; using fiction for mental exercise; and the pursuit of non conventional ideas. Warning: This will start out exactly as you expect and get very weird before it is all done.