An Open Mind Surgery

Our minds are not like our brains. They dont need to be closed and confined within the cranium. They dont need to be composed of only grey matter. They can have matters of all colours and sizes. A mind choosing to see only the white or the black or the grey is confined by its ignorance. Such a mind is not liberated and remains a prisoner of its own choices.

A Liberated or an Open mind is receptive to new ideas and argument. This mind is not prejudiced to radically different ideas or people.


Pre...what?

Prejudice simply means pre-judging someone or something. When you tend to judge somebody or something before you understand the relevant facts or even before you give a chance to the other person to justify his actions, you are being prejudical.

Prejudice takes many forms -
1.Discrimination based on Racial, ethnic, caste, sex is a form of prejudice. Racial prejudices have
been displayed during the Jew Holocaust during 2WW and Apartheid regime in S.Africa.

2.Discrimination towards a specific individual based on a persons identity ,thoughts ,actions , lifestyle or ideologies are personal choice prejudice. We see prejudices based on personal choices in daily life - Mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws have multiple prejudices against each other. For instance a mother-in-law may think that her daughter-in-law hates her if she doesn't talk to her and if she frequently visits her home whereas for the daughter it is just the case of being homesick. Similarly a daughter-in-law may construe every advice by her mother-in-law as an attempt to question her ability in managing the house. To top it all mother-in-law's have heard stories of daughter-in-laws who have insulted and thrown her in-laws from her house and all daughter-in-laws have heard stories of mother-in-laws who are cruel and tyrannical. So every interaction between both these entities are rife with misinterpretation (and prejudice)

3.Generalizations - people tend to think in patterns, whatever happens once or twice is considered as generic. Snakes and dangerous insects generally do not bite people if left to themselves but people kill them even if they just happen to see one in its natural habitat.An innocent house servant is the first suspect whenever anything gets lost or missing in the house.

How did we get infected with Prejudice?

Our prejudices are based on our personality, life experiences, upbringing and even genetics. Consider this - If you were born on another place and another religion or race, experienced different lifestyles, your prejudices would have been different! You would have different beliefs and ideals than what you have now.

Prejudices are acquired in the following ways

1. Personality - Development of a persons personality itself is based upon various factors like
hereditary, upbringing, life experinces. Some people develop a closed-minded, authoritarian and
dogmatic personality. Such personality types are more prone to be prejudical.But two people with the similar backgrounds might develop entirely different mindsets since no two person has intrinsically the same experiences and thought patterns at any point in their lives. You would have heard the story of a Thief who had 2 sons. One of them grew up to be a learned man and other one became a famous gangster. Both of them attributed their Dad as the inspiration. The Good guy said “I never wanted to end up like him”. The Bad guy said “What could I do? I learnt everything I saw my Dad do and naturally ended up being like him”. Understand that you and I may actually see the colors, objects, people differently. Our reactions to things happening around us differ based on our upbringing, experiences in life, thought patterns.

2. Groupism - Being attached to a group like religion, language, ethnicity, country has its share of
prejudices. On a group level every group maintains some inherent prejudices against the other group. Some Indians consider westerners as immoral,unfaithful and guilty of not respecting their elders. It was interesting to find that some South Indians have similar opinions about North Indians. Similarly some westerners consider India as a land of Flying fakirs, serpent dancers, Maharajahs and lazy cows on the middle of the road (ahem...which is still true in some places!!).

3. By Imitation - Children learn to prejudice and discriminate by observing elders. Children may discriminate with servants in the house, or ill-treat animals or shun street children based on how their parents behave with them. The Learning never stops when you grow.

How do we liberate the mind?

A) AVOID BEING JUDGEMENTAL

Watch yourself when you are judgmental about anything or anyone. Listen to alternative opinions, verify the facts before you form an opinion . Watch that while you were going through the facts or listening to others opinion, did you already have a opinion formed in your mind? Allow everybody to be like they are because they have the free will to be like they want to be. Restrain the need to see everything as right or wrong. Restrain the need to hate somebody because they have opposite or maybe wrong opinions.

Expect that everybody will Be different, Think different and Act differently for different situations. We cannot expect everybody to think like us and act like us and understand our reasons for doing so. Be prepared to change your opinion about something when you have new and compelling information about it.

Accept new answers as new possibilities if there are no definite answers for your question.Don’t be afraid of admitting that you may be wrong in your beliefs or opinions. This is the First step towards an open mind.

B) DEVELOP EMPATHY

Second step is to understand perspectives that are different from your current one. Develop EMPATHY. Empathy means “Understanding and entering into another’s feelings”. Developing this will enable you to understand why people behave differently. When you empathize with someone you feel like the other person feels, you understand why he behaves like he does and you begin considering the other persons opinion. You also begin to understand why and how he has formed these opinions.

Next time you see a rude person. Try to get inside his body and mind. Put yourself in his place. When did u get rude with someone last time? Why were you rude? Then apply the same answer to this person. When you can allow yourself to get rude for a certain situation, then this person also has the right to get rude for some other reason. Of course you will may never understand the reason but probably there is a reason similar to what you had when you got rude. Give everybody the benefit of doubt.

Learning Human psychology would be helpful in gaining insights to how different people think the way they do and what drives them to do so. This will be helpful in empathizing situations which you may not have experienced personally like meeting someone who brags, working with someone who is overtly stupid or having a friend who is miserly or a relative who is addicted to drinking or gambling.

Reading and Observing people will make you adept in understanding how we think and what drives our thinking. This will go a long way in empathizing with people and not pre-judging or wrongly judging people. Note that bookish knowledge alone cannot be considered as true or absolute, that will amount to prejudice again. Be guarded against generally labeling people based on the patterns which you have read in books.

C) PURSUE KNOWLEDGE PURSUE VARIED EXPERIENCE

An open mind needs exercise to remain open. Knowledge and varied experiences is the key in opening your mind. The World is full of alternate choices in every sphere of life. Some people choose Pepsi over Coke, Some like neither. Some people choose to vote Congress or BJP and again some people do neither. Some people are optimists, some are pessimists. Some are left-handed and some are right. Some are straight, some are gay and some are bisexuals. Exercising your mind with variety of influences, exposes you to alternate choices and views. These are not right or wrong choices, only different ones. Adopting an "To Each his own" attitude will keep you in a good stead while you go about understanding or experiencing ideologies and lifestyles pursued by others.

Wikihow has interesting steps to exercise an open mind here. I highly recommend that you check this link. Its full of sensible and crazy ideas which will make the process challenging and interesting.

The Sour, sweet, spicy, hot, pungent are all different tastes, each worth relishing, worth savouring and digesting. An open minded individual lives many lives and experiences the world in its totality - the world which is like us and the world which we which we cannot understand.