Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00168)

--- In theos-talk@y..., Drpsionic@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 1/10/02 1:01:20 AM Central Standard Time, 
> teosophy@m... writes:
> It could be, that they have difficulties talking with - heretics 
and the like.
> >>
> I think that is exactly the case. One of the greatest difficulties 
true believers of any stripe have is in dealing with people who don't 
see the same things they see the same way. 
> 
> It's the old, "But it's so obvious!" syndrome.
> 
Indeed. My current reading is Mind Science by Charles Tart, and he 
makes this insightful comment about paradigms and blindness:

The negative side of paradigmatic science comes, first, from the 
attitude of arrogance, whether that attitude is conscious and 
explicit or unconscious and implicit. Taking that attitude of 
knowing Truth, I now implicitly or explicitly think, "Since I 
understand everything important about (my part of) Reality, if you 
mention anything to me that doesn't obviously make sense within my 
paradigm, you're either ignorant or some kind of fool, and I don't 
have to waste my time listening to you." The paradigmatic attitude 
is not quite that obvious most of the time but that's the effect it 
has. It narrows people's openness to look at all aspects of 
reality... The second problem is that the paradigm narrows your 
perception because it's been so successful. It defines what's 
important to investigate further and what's not important, 
what's "trivial" and may be ignored...You've got a telescope or a 
microscope, as it were. Within those instruments' fields you see 
very, very well, but you tend not to see things outside those fields 
of view at all. If people mention things outside those fields, you 
tend to pity those poor fools that don't have a nice microscope or 
telescope like you, who don't know anything. (p. 25)

This obviously applies to Theosophists and occultists as well as to 
scientists or anyone else, and fits to a T some recent posts here.

PJ