The Human Antipathy to Change: The Mind's Search for Meaning

Take a look at this set of lines. What do you see?

Do you see anything? Or does it just look like random lines? A face maybe? Here, try this time.

Still nothing? Alright one more time.

What do you see now?

Is it the letter “E”?

Why do you now see a meaningful image while before you saw nothing but “just lines”? Aren’t these still just the same black lines on a white background? Yes, nothing has changed except the relative configuration of these lines. However, the configuration in this final image has symbolic significance because it is a pattern we have encountered before. Over time we have learned to associate this arrangement of lines with the letter “E”. It is important to remember that the lines in the final image are no less arbitrary than the lines in the ones before (think about how many different types of "E's" exisit E,E,E,E,E)  yet the final “E” seems to be the only recognizable pattern. In other words (or letters), this is nothing but an ‘e’lusion of the mind as it attempts to find meaning in a world that really just random lines.

To pvore tihs piont futrehr, I wlil bgien to tpye uinsg mexid up lteerts. Isn’t it aziamng? Eevn wtih all the ltetres out of odrer you can sltil raed the txet and unerandstd its’ manieng. Tihs is the mgaic of the mnid leadis and genemtlan. Low and bhelod the pwoer of mnetal costnrtucion! 

This example clearly illustrates that what we see is structured by the mind’s drive for a logical ordering of the universe. As the French anthropologist Levi Strauus put it, our thought patterns are highly disciplined intellectual structures designed to give the world coherence, shape, and meaning. What’s more is that our consciousness represents a selective simplification and ordering of nearly endless possibility. (Think about how many different ways those eight black lines can be interpreted.) Consciousness is a “reducing-valve” that protects us from being overwhelmed by the incessant onslaught of stimuli. Consciousness allows us to select, focus and make real a specific event out of a continuum of possibilities; otherwise we would be caught in an impossible deluge of potential configurations and constructs of the world.  Thus we are dependent on this editing process of mind to create a common denominator, an agreement which can cement us in reality.

This fundamental process of mind is the origin of our antipathy to change, the root of what I call “psychological inertia”. In a world that is characterized by change, we seek that which is familiar, stable, and unvarying to help us cope. That is why we can only see the letter “E” and are unable to accept the other configurations as equally valid or meaningful. Our mental construction of reality, our weltanschauung, is adapted to mitigate the inherent entropy of the universe. It is only through agreement upon a common worldview which we can have a subjective experience of consciousness, let alone a functioning society. In other words, our worldview is fundamentally based upon diminishing change and randomness to the point where a common “objective” reality can be upheld.

Every culture’s worldview is different; in fact every person’s worldview is different. I’ve barrowed the picture below to show how people with different worldviews arrive at different interpretations of the same image.   

If you had to describe what was going on in this picture, what would you say? Most Westerners, who are used to seeing boxlike architectural structures, interpret the picture as a family sitting indoors. They see the shape above the woman’s head as a window with a view of plants outside. However, when scientists showed this sketch to certain East African peoples, they all assumed that the shape above the woman’s head was a box or metal object that she was balancing. Moreover they thought the family was sitting under a tree since their culture contained few visual cues to indicate perpendicular walls. Whose interpretation is correct? I would aver that they both are.

Now let us consider someone under the influence of LSD. How might he or she see this picture? Would there be colors? Would the lines be moving and flowing into each other? Would people melt and reform into other shapes? The real question is whether such an interpretation of the picture is any less valid that what you or I see. Although my reality adjusted thinking tells me this is a picture of a family sitting in a room, this is just one interpretation of nearly limitless possibilities. For me this image is akin to the set of lines that form the little “E”, it has recognizable meaning. However, a person on LSD may see this picture as nothing more than squiggly lines with no associated meaning.This illustrates that regardless of what's on the paper, our minds are providing (or not) the meaning.

Since drug use provides us with a special case of consciousness, I'd like barrow the words of author Joesph Chilton Pearce as he comments on the topic in his book The Crack in the Cosmic Egg:

“ To shatter our working models of the universe does not lead to a ‘true picture’ of the universe…our concepts are to some extent arbitrary constructs, but to disrupt or dissolve them with drugs does not free us into some universal knowledge ‘out there’ in the great beyond. There is instead the loss of meaningful structures of agreement needed for communion with others. This can lead to the loss of personality definition itself…any worldview is a creative tension between possibility and choice. This is the tension that holds community and ‘real’ together. This is the cohesive force of our own center of awareness, the thin line between the loss of self to autistic disillusion on one hand, or slavery to broad statistics of the world on the other.”

Our consciousness is rigged with a catch; namely that in order to survive we must limit our interpretation of events to give the world structuring, yet at the same time doing so negates one of the greatest human assets—the ability to imagine alternatives and creatively synthesize novel ideas.

Just because we have arrived at one "reality adjusted" mode of thinking does not mean it is the only valid  approach to conscious thought. Autistic savants and other creative geniuses typically lie at the boundaries of what we consider “normal” thought. But rather than ostracizing and marginalizing those who have adopted a less “agreed upon” configuration of reality, we should seek to learn as much as possible from their unique worldview. It is sad that one mode of thinking has come to predominate the globe when so many varieties of consciousness are possible.

To be fair, the rational, analytic mindset the has predominate the last few hundred years was and is an invaluable asset to our growth and evolution. It took us through an incredible period of science and empiricism which served humanity in countless ways. But as I have quoted before, the problems of the world today cannot be solved at the level of thought which created them. I'm almost certian we cannot take the next step towards a brighter future if we have people who cannot think outside the confines of their inherited worldview.

To truly evolve, we need to buck this trend of limiting our creative potential and push the boundary of what we consider possible. This is especially pertinent in areas of eduction, where most teaching imposes limits on what we think and know.  Tests will never stimulate creativity and innovation because the questions asked presuppose an answer congruent with the question, and most questions are closed-ended and retrospective in nature. Novel ideas aren't likely to arise when people's success is based upon their ability to answer within the established parameters. As a teacher, I don't want you to tell me what I want to hear; I want you to tell me what I've never heard before.  But the problems of today's educaiton system is a topic for another time, so i will resist the urge to mount my soapbox and return to the main discussion. 

A lot of ideas have been tossed around (since I'm prone to digress when excited), so let me reiterate the main point in different words. Our conscious mind is designed to see just one version of reality. The version of the world we see is a product of our genetics and our unique experience: our culture, our early childhood relationships, our values, our learned responses, our semantic knowledge, etc. The diagram at right illustrates our worldview as an onion with different layers that shape our perception and understanding of reality. This onion, which we’ve built up throughout the course of our lives, is the world as we know it; it is what we see and practice day by day. Moreover, it is how we know the world (i.e. how we relate to the thoughts and feelings that run through us.) This onion is our comfort zone, our familiar ways of being. And while our onion worldview will always be undergoing some mutation and change, there’s nothing more threatening than peeling away its layers thereby tearing down the matrix that grants us a first person experience of reality. To protect our onion (our worldview, our ego, our consciousness perception of reality,) we tend towards stasis over variance and seek to preserve the status quo rather than include difference and unfamiliarity. It is easier to accept the one story we've been told since birth than embrace a new one. This is self-preservation on the mental level.

This drive for self-preservation and stasis causes ways of being that I will outline below and hopefully discuss in greater detail at a later point.

·         The habit of wanting certainty: being more interested in the familiar than the unknown.

·         The habit of wanting to feel safe and secure. Although most of us could say that we feel most alive when taking healthy, creative risks, how often do hesitate and take the easier, less risky path. 

·         The habit of wanting to keep everything the same rather than evolving and changing. This entails a willingness to let go and step into the unknown, but too often we are afraid of what’s around the corner.

·         The habit of adhering to a familiar life even if it is unhealthy. On the flip side is the failure to pursue a more attractive future out of fear of uncertainty.

·         The habit of looking to the past when we confront new challenges and problems rather than opening ourselves up to new possibilities that are outside of things we’ve seen or considered before.

·         The habit of avoiding difficult truths that might hurt or disturb our worldview.

·         And perhaps most importantly, the habit of thinking small and short-term rather than thinking in a larger context. This is the habit of living an egocentric life driven by petty fears and desires rather than embracing a world-centric outlook that pursues our highest virtues.