Re: I'm just a contrarian, lol!

Ha ha ha! Recently I was encouraged to be a "contrarian":

con·trar·i·an - noun - a person who typically acts or thinks in a way contrary to popular or accepted opinion. http://www.yourdictionary.com/contrarian
- When someone cries "fire" in a crowded theater, a contrarian is the person who first checks to see if there really is a fire before rushing in the door. (Unknown)

I found it works, and protects me from my own tendancy to fall into the trap of believing the news I like to hear. But the more I use this method, the more I realise how brainwashed I am! The worst thing is, the good news appears to be the truth, because it is what our brain wants to hear and it makes us feel good. But the book "The Pleasure Trap" by Lisle and Goldhamer - free video here http://video.vsh.org/lisle.html
- made me recognise how easy it is for our minds to fall into dietary pleasure traps, and it's interesting that finding the real truth seems to be a reversal of our natural instincts - to pursue the opposite of pleasure, as it were, based upon a scientific or logical method, in order to find a greater truth. Applying the contrarian way of thinking seems to do just that in a field potentially wider than nutrition, for example with science, and religion. In a way it is as if we are all in the Asch experiment, none of us know the truth and we are all searching for it.

In the Asch experiment, a contrarian would have walked up to the lines and measured them with a bit of string or paper. That would have burst the bubble, but doing that involves stepping outside of the comfort zone. We are so used to not doing that...

Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble, ha ha! I'm just gonna get some chocolate... ;) Tweet