- Linda Hesthag Ellwein
- Brooklyn, NY
- United States
Communications, Change, and Photography, Oikonomia, Inc.
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How attached are you to your deeply held beliefs? If solutions to global problems challenge your worldview, how do you react?
Allan Savory's recent TED Talk introduced an unlikely and politically incorrect solution to reversing global desertification and climate change with the use of livestock as a tool, and different decision making.
Well-meaning laws, bureaucracies, and activists at the mercy of public opinion have stifled this work from moving forward on a large scale in the US. Belief systems and the fear of being wrong often prohibits change.
How do you respond to ideas that challenge your belief system? How do we stop our paradigms and prejudices from unfairly shaping decision making, and allowing us to take real risks for lasting change? What's your reaction to cows helping save the world? What idea have you believed and been completely wrong?
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Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
The history of my worldview is not so common in the U.S. I grew up in Soviet Ukraine. At school I believed that I'm very lucky to be born in the greatest country on Earth - the Soviet Union. A mere look at the world map was enough to see how great it was. Not only it was huge, but my country was also leading the world to the better future for humanity - without exploitation, free of economic ups and downs of capitalist economies and free from the "vices of the rotten West". I believed that my country stood for peace in the world, against imperialism and neo-colonialism who sought to destroy the countries of working-class people. I was "free from religion" (opium for the people) and "armed" with Marxism-Leninism as the "most progressive ideology in the world".
We know what happened later. The "iron curtain" fell. The Berlin wall fell. The "rotten West" turned out to smell pretty good and it turned out that Marxism-Leninism had been used to kill and repress millions of people.
Lessons? Never be sure that my views are right or the best.
Later in my life I became interested in religion. I wondered, how this "opium for the people" works. I wondered, how people believe logical paradoxes and obvious absurdities that contradict physical facts. It was an interesting experience. I think, I know now why people have irrational beliefs. I learned to recognize them and appreciate them. I deliberately participated in atheist forums, not proselytizing, but advocating for religion and challenging atheist beliefs while challenging mine. It was, again, a transforming experience. I was exposed to facts that religion which seems to preach love and forgiveness was used for centuries to justify ruthless genocide, inquisition, and atrocities. I did a lot of reading and processing these facts. Lessons? See above...
Mike Colera 10+
You mention you exploration of religion and how it was subverted by many atrocities. In my travels, I witnessed a number of what were found to be noble causes that were corrupted by greed and destroyed by vandals. I have no idea what is in the mind of man that so many would destroy a thing of beauty or a noble idea for no other reason then to destroy it. I think it is that flaw in human nature that will really be the cause of our species extinction.
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
James Hardiman
Scott Reil