Hello friends!
A lot of us never question anything. We accept things the way they are and assume that they’ve always been that way. This type of thinking, or lack thereof, makes processing the world easier and less complex. When we begin to question everything, we’re usually left with more questions than answers. This can leave us feeling overwhelmed and unable to conceptualize the world using our previous manner of thinking. However stressful this can be, asking questions and inquiring leads to progress both collectively and as individuals. Today, we’ll be focusing on the topic of questioning cultural narratives.
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It took me a long time to even become aware of the fact that I wasn’t really questioning any of the cultural narratives so prevalent today. The first person I heard explicitly articulate the importance of this type of thinking was Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. I decided to take his Dating & Relationships Course, available on his website, and it forced me to look both introspectively and culturally, to question the inner and outer narratives that run our lives.
My ignorance was thrust into the spotlight, something both useful and uncomfortable. I became aware of my own self-limiting beliefs, my unconscious thoughts around relationships and intimacy. This ultimately lead me to the realization that the probability of me being unaware of a million other things is approximately, and I’ve crunched the numbers, one hundred percent.
Accepting this information with humility is the best and only method I know of productively dealing with it. If we can’t accept it with humility, we’ll probably shut down and remain more closed-minded than we ought to be. This type of mentality leads to the tensions we’ve been seeing in today’s culture, where we refuse to have conversations with anybody who slightly differs from our own ideological belief system. Keeping an open mind and trying our best to understand each other’s perspectives might be one way of healing the divide we’re currently living through.
Questioning the narratives around masculinity and femininity, deciding for yourself whether or not America is a tyrannical patriarchy or perhaps an imperfect country with both its faults and virtues. Questioning the narrative that all police officers are inherently bad, or asking yourself if being white makes someone evil, instead of blindly accepting them, is what we all need to be doing.
Question the narratives and come to your own conclusions. Think for yourself.
Until next Monday,
Trevor