Nothing comes from nothing. My conscious thought trains get loaded in the unconscious. The thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) churn together to find links between immediate inputs from the sense organs, and historical items from memory.
‘Truth’ takes a bashing. A human mindbrain is shaped by nature, nurture and chance. This is the best that can be done to speedily shape and reshape ‘reality’ in a particular time and place eg the snake in the path is in fact a piece of rope. Better safe than sorry. It is often sensible to be pessimistic and neurotic. Remember - heavier than air machines can fly. The world is flat. Atoms are divisible. God is dead; and a woman’s place is in the home.
I have lived and worked in five countries as a teacher, education advisor, and as a plain language
editor. My personal ‘reality’ has taken several blows as I have interacted with people in different cultures and climates, and with cutting edge thinkers and activists. This has given rise to various periods of cognitive dissonance. The verities are never in fact eternal.
There is the problem of ‘speaking truth to power’ when there is no truth. But there is also the notion of ‘the best working hypothesis in the light of evidence currently available’. This has led to recent advances in evolutionary psychology and behavioural economics when they are linked to progress in neurology. The advanced line of scientific thinking relishes the notions that ‘the only certainty is doubt ‘and’ the only constant thing is change’.
I was distracted many times while writing the above paragraphs. But most of the time I noticed them arising and thus pulled attention back to the focus topic.
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