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What you're bring up here, Paul, are framesets. Framesets are the context we place the information we gather. Every minute we get new information, what we choose to accept and reject (and the angle we view that information) is based on these framesets. The stronger you are emotionally, the broader your frameset can get.

Note that I didn't say, "The stronger you are intellectually." It has /nothing/ to do with how smart your are. I know amazingly smart people with tiny framesets on, for example, patriotism. Their country is great and everyone wishes they could live there, etc. It's a psychological trait and is worst in the aspects where we are weakest.

The stronger (and usually smaller) a frameset is, the more it can't be argued against. Logic won't work. And heresy is simply when we poke at strong framesets.

The way to battle them is: to be a good person. By being good (honest to yourself, honest to others, loving, and generous), you push up pool. When you do the opposite, you pull it down. The healthier we get and society gets, the less we'll need framesets. In other words, by making the world a better place we'll make it ... less messed up. :) You know what I mean.

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Do you have a reference for 'framesets'? They sound interesting, but I have not been able to find more info on google.

It's a term I made up. It's actually part of a much bigger, more interesting subject: individual-society "ology". Where the individual comes into contact with the rest of the people around them. (Where psychology covers individual-individual, and sociology covers society-society relations.) In other words, when you lie on the leather sofa, you would be asked, "So how are the people down the street whose name you don't know?" The people we pass on the street play a huge role in our lives.

You see, everyone chooses a strategy around their teens or even into their twenties to say why they are valuable, why they have a right to exist. A woman might choose: sexy, smart, beautiful, motherly, etc. And that becomes their identity. So attacking that (call a smart person "stupid" and they'll light up) is attacking their entire identity, what they've chosen as their right to exist. Have you seen a university professor in a tweed jacket? There you go.

The framesets I mentioned are tied to that identity and defended with that same "raison d'etre" fierceness. Information that violates the frameset, violates the identity strategy. It's like you have all your money in a particular stock and someone is saying something negative about the company. The more stake you have in that company, and the more fear you have of it crashing, the more unwilling you will be to be rational about what others may say.

Following the analogy, it might seem that diversifying is the answer: you're smart, but also into extreme sports and healthy, etc. That's not really the answer, though. The trick is to get your money out of the stock market; you have to care as little as possible what people think. Sound easy? It's one of the hardest things you can possibly do.