Speed/belief

What happens when our own thoughts are not so self evident as we once supposed? I am beginning to grasp the complexity and obstacles to articulating my beliefs in arguments and realizing moreso the inherent barriers to changing someone’s outlook in life. Perhaps this is the onset of ‘mature’ argumentation, or simply disillusionment, but the sum of my feelings comes to the understanding that powerful structural norms determine people’s outlook, that rationality often has nothing to do with why someone believes as they believe. Reasoning (deciding actions based on logic [even though this isn’t even quite enough, who knows why people find some arguments logical and others not]), seems to require time, a paused period of comparison and introspection. In this regard, the most powerful ideology is that of scarcity. If someone perceives a scare resource, or a need to act for the sake of survival, it compels them to act quickly. Speed begets a decision making structure that encourages action in terms of pre-defined norms, whereby the content of decisions has already been made. Practice rearticulates our beliefs into reality by means of decisions we don’t realize we are making. Part of the problem lies in beliefs that people don’t know they have – the assumption of naturalness which refuses situatedness universalizes our beliefs, creating the ‘facts’ against which we determine ‘opinion.’ People don’t know why they act as they do, and yet they continue to act.

Duncan