My last post led me down a road of deeper consideration about our ideas of what is real, what is true, and what is right. There may be a Zeitgeist forming around this idea as I see it appearing more and more in popular culture, largely as a result of acts within subcultures. The basic idea is consistent across the spectrum: We all cling to particular beliefs and define our lives around them.
Today my students had a moment of clarity, understanding the different schools of sociological thought as clans or gangs who each see the world in a very different way and often seek to bring others into their way of thinking. They then went that next step and asked what particular lens of point of view I subscribe to. I am a believer in Symbolic Interaction as a primary driver behind all human interaction. I believe we all cling to symbols and build meaning around those concepts and things in order to build meaning around our lives. In fact the idea of a support structure is largely based upon building a network of people who, quite literally scaffold your understanding of how the universe works.
The church is all about this idea of clinging to a central belief. Mormon, Christian, Jewish–all monotheistic religions believe there is one true God and all others are false idols. Now consider how that view shapes your life and your perceptions. If your God is the God, then by default the others are worshipping a false idol or somehow misinterpreting the word of God in a way that has led them astray (however slightly) from the true path. Some people take this quite literally and insist upon verbally reinforcing the idea that their God is it. Radicals in all religions tend to act out violently in order to enforce the so-called word of God.
In the end that is all about beliefs and views and the idea of what is right and wrong. On a far greater scale we cling to the belief of what we are capable of as individuals. We cage ourselves with our own fear or expectations of what we can do or can be. I grew up in a household where my mother thought I wasn’t capable of a great many things. She set sights fairly low for me, but I had dramatically different ideas.
We each live in a cage of our own ideas. We allow ourselves to believe in our ability or inability to be and do things in this world. We limit our opportunity to the scripts of who we think we are and who we have decided to be in this existence. This is all on us. There is nothing holding us back from being more than we are save for ourselves. We are only limited by our own conceptions.