Existentialism with a dash of contradiction… a necessary ingredient.
To consider ones self an existentialist, a person must be willing to learn through experience and emotional interaction with other people and things. In order to do this, however, one must be willing to be honest with one’s self…
i.e. Up to this point, life has led me to believe what I believe, and I should be honest about that… but how?
Admitting fallibility: If I observe something today that is in conflict with my current world view and it is reason enough to alter my current opinion I should have the ability to be honest enough with myself to change my opinion. This lies outside of other people’s opinions or what most people refer to as peer pressure but is rather an “internal heuristic emotional reasoning” (please forgive the incongruous term). We should not only be willing to contradict ourselves but rather looking for opportunities to do so. This, to me, seems honest… but I might change my opinion tomorrow.
http://www.totalexec.com.au/storage/contradiction.png?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1285668608857
contrarianinconsistent 
present research seems to suggest that it is extremely difficult to change our ‘world view/opinion’ – that most of our ‘cognition’ is culturally based and culturally defined
this could suggest that perhaps the opinion that we can cognitively change is a tad presumptuous? core values are seemingly far deeper than we had ever imagined. the elevation of the idea of free thought and self-determination is possibly a noble, but somewhat arrogant opinion (perhaps one worthy of changing? 🙂 )
what do you think?
Thanks for that link, it was really cool.
In her conclusion she mentions ,”No single narrative serve the needs of everyone everywhere [and that people can benefit from] Incorporating new perspectives into their own narrative which has been driving their choices for so long.”
I’m trying to say the same thing (probably less articulately) and maybe I made the point a bit narrowly by inferring that various ideologies are mutually exclusive rather than possibly being more usefully “incorporatively-reciprocal” (which is the point Miss Iyengar makes very articulately – I prefer her point, in hindsight it seems it was the one I was trying to make).
So effectively I like her agree that it is not an easy thing to do, the majority of our decisions are culturally (and neurologically – but that is another kettle of fish) deterministic, but I do think there are ways around it and one is possibly (as she suggests and I agree) to have an open mind.