“Most human beings are looking for confirmation, not information.” David Jackson
Some seek knowledge for its own sake, while others seek it with one goal in mind…to be acknowledged. It’s like petting a cat. The character of it is a given in the core of self, the need of belonging in the family, group, tribe, culture, religion, nation and species.
All of this is not recognized from the viewpoint of basic biological imperative of needing an ego identity in order to exist. The knowledge of this is twisted, socialized, denied, and hidden, in the core of individual experience, depending on where and when one is born, raised, socialized and inculturated.
Like dressing the innocent in psychological and sociological clothing that will bring to the child its adult identity. The seed of that identity is the need of biological belonging given in its existing as a biological entity, created out of the collective archetype of which its existence is dependent.
This is inescapable, the urge is inescapable. Perhaps it is in the context of manifesting this biological belonging that we come to the only means of unifying identity. This reaches from a closed parochial identity to an open global sense of all belonging, identifying, and feeling an obligation to the species as a whole, rather than just the self, the family, clan, race, culture or religion.
The levels of distortion and ambiguity are immense. Particularly as previously stated, because there is little awareness or even the access to the kind of experience in childhood development that would or could open the gates of the self image to be acknowledged in our interdependence of humanity’s vision of itself, ie; to be acknowledged in what and who one is in human content, rather than birth context.
It is doubtful this would, could, or will be embraced universally, but I sense that this universal acknowledgment of the self is something that many are already understanding and accepting. There is a universal, biological acknowledgment of all species available in the understanding and thought, in the global bank, of knowledge of all humanity.
There exists a plethora of studies, facts and data of this biological identity, but most do not desire to have this scientific acknowledgment of their organic self. Most get their identity from arcane belief images, ie; The Child of God, etc.
It is important to note that most humans don’t want to learn about this, or much else. They seek confirmation of what they already believe and feel they know, embracing their well established concepts of who they are. This factor is more of a neurological/psychological construct of so many who are unaware of how they come to identify themselves as an ego. Many of the sociological identities are constructed of images rather than knowledge. These are derived from social labels like athlete, plumber, soldier, policeman, president, general, wife, mother, father, hero, villain, criminal, and professor, etc, etc, throughout human societies and culture. I have seen many individuals who have retired from the world and carry their label around as if it were their person. Look at glamor, movie stars, male heroes, etc.
It is especially present in the “House of Intellect”, the colleges and universities, where they were accustomed to feeling themselves acknowledged for simply being a member of the “House”. In the present they continue to desire acknowledgment, but are no longer living and working in the “House”, many are no longer learning. They have been evicted. They are faced with necessity, the reality of active participation in learning, that has long since evaded them. In many cases they stopped learning when they received their degrees, long before they were retired. Now they are forced to step out into the open matrix of living knowledge and learning and are doing nothing. They continue to expect to get the same ego acknowledgment they got in the past. Poor souls.
The pursuit of knowledge is a continuous lifelong activity and if one can discover and acknowledge this they can awaken to living in the activity of becoming and learning. Becoming is a never ending story. It’s not so much about stuffing the brain with information, as it is about integrating knowledge into one’s living self, the embrace of understanding the mystery of life.
“Someone told me that I was gullible, that I accepted things too easily.” she continued, “I decided that I would be more careful and not accept everything people told me.”
This person is gullible because she is shallow and naive. She is intelligent, but seeks only the knowledge that will confirm her self image and what she feels she knows and believes to be true. Her shallow convictions are based on ignorance, a lack of self awareness. She is trapped in her own ego.
I thank her for this insight.