There is no right or wrong (belief /outlook / attitude). We give it a label from the outcomes it causes or how it influences directly or indirectly what happens. If we equate this to a pair of glasses we look at the world through, then a few points to consider:
For a significant majority of us, the “frameworks” we use are “given” to us by parents, anybody else who played a nurturing role, teachers from kindergarten all the way through college, popular culture and its varied sources including social media, peers, influencers et all. There might be more, but these were the crucial ones that stood out.
These frameworks get reinforced, adjusted and reinterpreted during interactions with others and as life unfolds over a period of time. Sometimes in an instant, sometimes over years. Sometimes we do it consciously, sometimes unconsciously.
These “frameworks” through repetition become beliefs that influence our outlook – our attitude(s). They also influence how we “perceive” what happens. These feed emotions.
Combine these three points and then you have a system that is interlinked and reinforcing each other, like a feedback loop of sorts. The “how” we perceive reinforces the “what” was perceived. While the framework mostly explains “why” we perceived something that way it might appear logical to fix the belief that caused it, which is not as easy as it sounds. It’s like saying if your glasses are tinted, get clear ones. But what if the tint caused something else to make sense or that is all we know? Then what? Sometimes this is counter-intuitive and can cause a sensory overload.
The Belief system has the innate ability to invoke and reinforce emotions.
Our beliefs are unique to us. There is a tendency to generalize, a need to “protect” these beliefs / outlooks / attitudes from others who don’t “understand” us. These beliefs might also sound like excuses or rationalizations to others, but for us, they are the truth.
Sometimes, there is a gap between the “intent” and what the “action eventually communicated” (the gap between “what I wanted to do” and “what I did” and “how it was received”) especially in Social Space. Remember the times we did something with a “good” intention that eventually backfired? And we told ourselves “NEVER AGAIN!”. We might not realize it right then… but a belief just took shape and reinforced itself in the blink of an eye.
Despite culture, background or location, each belief system, the “framework” has a “way it thinks” and a “way it behaves or does things”. If we treat this thing we call culture as an invisible field around us that radiates our beliefs outwards and directly or indirectly influences the perceptions and actions that follow in others then you can see how it becomes a living system where everybody in it is contributing to its growth and maintenance and propagation.
What we see, hear, observe, experience in our interactions with others get filtered through these attitudes and the others perceive us using a similar mechanism of their own with their own set of beliefs, attitudes and actions linked to their perceptions.
What color tint is our glasses today?
What’s our Belief System (BS) around it?
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