Entertaining Nonrational Experiences
Dismissing Experiences Out-Of-Hand Because They Are Not Comprehended Within A Particular Understanding Is Not Wise.
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The dictionary says a “worldview” is a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world. That’s way too impotent for what I want to write about, but we don’t have a good word — or even a common meaning for a potential word — for what it is that I wish to write about.
Instead, I will just say that a worldview, as defined in a dictionary, is a rational creation of the intellect, whether it be a full-blown philosophical system, or just a general conception of the world. But if our received worldview was actually beneficial, would it have brought us to the place we find ourselves today, looking over a precipice of a profound welling failure as a species?
I want to suggest, that we need something different — a different kind of active understanding of the world, and of course, of ourselves. And in the present situation that we find ourselves in, it needs to be something other than the same philosophies and conceptions that have — because they were all rational creations — brought our world to the end of the line, that seemingly being the fruition of our rational ideas.
We can blame the victims, and dally around doing nothing different and see where that leads us, or we can change our approach, which is what I have done in my life. And in this, I am really just parroting the words of Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein:
We have to learn to think in a new way.¹