My Life In The Cave

The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world. -- Francis Bacon, philosopher scientist.

 

 

I inherited a Western worldview, specifically a theistic worldview, more specifically the Christian theistic worldview, and to be most specific, the fundamentalist Christian worldview.

 

In my efforts to disentangle myself from that fundamentalist Christian mindset I had inherited, I gradually moved towards something of an anti-Christian worldview, that not only attempted to correct the errors of the former, but set out to redefine the very foundations of how a worldview should be built.

 

I moved from one cave into another. 

 

Now I am dedicating myself to at least trying to take a good, hard look at the "greater or common world."

 

Note to self: Be humble. Speak, but don't forget to listen as well.  Always seek truth, but never be so arrogant to think you have cornered it.