Bleeding Edge

Please follow through on my flight of fancy, because we are going to jump off, of a perfectly good airplane and start hurling towards the earth at a constantly increased rate of speed, until…

Now for the purposes of this exercise — let’s assume that your mind is like a parachute…

Yes it is and this is how it works:

Your mind functions best, only when it is open — very much like a parachute, that helps slow down your descent, from the skies up above, as you speed towards the earth.

But when it is not open — again much like a closed parachute — it speeds you to the ground, and thus rather quickly, you meet the earth, crash, and die…

Because if your parachute (mind) is not open on your descent from the skies, then your crash is assured.

Same as when your mind is closed, fully packed with what you already know, unable to allow fresh ideas, or opposing points of view, and thus leads you to erroneous assumptions, and wrong-headed conclusions — that are a crash in the making.

Because when your closed mind assumes that it knows it all, and when the fully shut mind assumes exactly, what others are thinking about you — you are usually, dead wrong…

Because the mind is like the parachute in its functionality. It needs to be open and only through positive clarification — it becomes thus. Indeed the mind’s good functioning, is not determined by how we form and hold firm to our opinions. Nor is it determined by how we fight tooth & nail in order to hold fast to our well formed opinions, and keep the prosaic views we hold about our world — but by how flexible we are, towards changing our opinions and ideas, in light of a changing reality, new circumstances, fresh evidence, and new people in our lives.

The flexibility, the resilience, and the capacity to pivot are the trademarks of an open mind…

Mind openness, much like an open parachute works best when the jumper has been trained through academic or other learning to keep an Open Mind throughout life because knowledge itself changes constantly as new discoveries are assuredly coming down the pike constantly.

Yet most people know what they know and keep their minds tightly closed around what they’ve got in there. And of course that attitude guarantees the certain intellectual and perhaps physical death, of the jumper…

Mainly because the functionality of the parachute is determined by it’s being open, thus protecting the jumper, by slowing down the rate of descent, as he speeds towards the earth.

But, when it is closed — it is nothing but extra weight, speeding you down towards the earth…

This is the same as the fact that the intelligent & understanding mind never assumes, never jumps to conclusions, and doesn’t hold fast to any opinions amongst those ideas, that we tend to hold dear and close to our chest for far too long… to do us any good.

Therefore, my advise to you is this:

Please keep changing your mind.

Yours,
Dr Churchill

PS:

Because we know now that there are always many more points of view, than what are visible at first pass.

And we also know that seeing each one of them, and examining them closely, is much more rewarding, entertaining, and enlightening…

Since we at least remain open and flexible to roll, once we hit the ground, and thus avoid grave injury, breaking our back, or even death.

Smart eh?

After all, the difference between stupidity and genius is that even geniuses have their limitations, whereas the stupids — not so much…