It is no secret that the various tribes and bubbles of our world have wildly differing beliefs about things. Why can’t people just accept the truth? But the truth is so contentious. And framing is so contentious. And all these people seem to have the most outlandish superstitions.
An abiding feature of these podcasts, as we’ve highlighted many times, is this thing called Systems Thinking, and while this is a broad enough discipline to be fairly tribal in its own right, one key feature of this Systems Thinking is thinking about your thinking.
In this episode we review some of the things in normal western life that have the character of superstition, and explore to what extent our innate capacity for gullibility and naïvity might be used to our advantage, in evolving a more constructive mindset; in connecting better with Nature, and specifically in nurturing the health of our habitat.
Talking points:
- An experience with a palm reader
- The power of belief and ritual in performance
- Listener comments – a bishop, a yogi, and a reflection on who we are
- Some superstitions – recognisable, and hidden
- Like Science – eg impact of false HRT Study warning cancer
- To what extent are your superstitions working for you?
- Heuristics and humility regarding knowledge
- Good and bad fairy-tales
- What you do and what you think about it
- Whatever gets you through the night
- We all need superstitions
- Faith as an alternative to cynicism
- Faith in your own human system
- Faith in our project of a viable habitat
- The Good Place – it’s impossible to be “Good”
- The system is fundamentally bad
- The challenge is bigger than all of us
- And that is why we need faith in a higher power to sustain us
Links:
Fundamentalism as a superstition about text
On a scientific Truth that turned out to be untrue – HRT and cancer
William James (Philosopher and psychologist)
On pragmatism
On the Variety of Religious Experience (Wikipedia preçis)
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