Most people have a difficult time accepting new ideas. Or even considering them. I see it in all areas of life. Perhaps it’s just habit — as the author of Tarzan wrote — we are “creatures of habit.”
We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us. (The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs.)
More often, the “new ways of schooling ourselves have not ceased to exist” — we just won’t consider them.
I started paying attention to our stubbornness in accepting new ideas while I listened to various nonfiction books on Audible. For example, Captain Cook decided to take some interesting food items during his sea travel in 1768-71. He brought along carrot marmalade and sauerkraut, enough for the crew. For the first time, no one got scurvy. But no one believed that the change in diet had anything to do with preventing scurvy. So years went by and more sailors died. And people got scurvy. Another book was about trials in building the Panama Canal. Yellow fever broke out and even though someone had determined that it was linked to the mosquito, no one would agree to use mosquito nets. More died. In England, people believed that disease was caused by putrid vapors. Medical doctors refused to believe that if they washed their hands when delivering babies, they could prevent infections that caused the new mothers to die.
I wonder if what we believe is embedded in our thoughts and passed on as knowledge throughout the generations. Kind of a different take on DNA — genetics passing on more than physical attributes. My “new way of schooling” has led me to study quantum physics.
Quantum theory is teaching us that implicit in our very thinking are certain flaws and misperceptions that, unseen and taken for granted, unnecessarily constrain and limit our ability to apprehend the nature of nature, including our own. The founders of quantum physics oftentimes referred to as genuis physicists, people such as Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Erwin Schradinger, famously argued that quantum physics is first and foremost a new way of thinking. Indeed, the most far-reaching impact of that uniquely twentieth century mode of thought, quantum physics, will be found within the human mind. (Levy, Paul ; Houston , Jean. Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality (p. xxix). SelectBooks, Inc.. Kindle Edition.)
Much more to say about all this — but I’m still getting my head wrapped around this new way of thinking.
