Sedimentation: the existentialist challenge to stereotypes
This kind of investigation into the nature of our own biases can allow for insight into them and that, in turn, can provide greater freedom, alacrity and balance in our views and behaviors, regardless of what the permutations of our personal set of conditioning provides. It makes for better debates and allows for a less emotive/reactive interaction that can then translate into reasonable responses and even greater respect for others.
Simply put, habituation is a two-edged sword: you wouldn't want to have to think about how to tie a show every time you did it, but our biases and inculcated stereotypes may also work in the same way as they become automatic and unconscious when we aren't mindful of them. That is when a question like, "I am I thinking it or is it thinking me?" becomes relevant and offers potential for putting some cracks in the confines of our conceptual shell. Sometimes, merely being more aware of the processes themselves initiates the insights needed to expand both our understanding and view towards a more inclusive and open, (as well as fresh and limpid) perspective. When we can get a sense for the enclosure of repetitive, patterned thoughts and beliefs that present like a wall of posters before us announcing what's always playing at the Comfort Zone Theater, it is a small step to rip them down and begin to deconstruct that wall.
We know that fear is a very primal and visceral emotion. It has vital survival value when it is in its own place,i.e., relevant to the immediate circumstances. However, we humans are faced with many, often neurotic extensions and reactions to fear that can have detrimental effects and that can freeze us in place when there is no fight or flight involved. When we come to the edge of our own, encapsulated and often myopic viewpoints, that is also when that shadow-like fear becomes more evident. Often, we discover that to be the limiting factor that holds us back from our own greater freedom and when we realize its nature, we can simply look it in the face and let it dissolve itself leaving us to take that stroll outside the cave of prejudices and experience the rising Sun in in the vast clear sky of the mind.
I would say to be progressive, liberal or democratic, (alone or in combination) might make a person amenable to this kind of investigation in order to expand the breadth of our understanding and bring that to light as action in the social sphere by way of more flexibility in our personal behaviors. It seems that complex and tumultuous times like these indicate the need for knowledge along these lines and our due consideration of the implications. We simply need to decide if any effort on our parts along these lines is worth it regarding the essential foundations of our own view and participation in society at large.
This article merely touches the surface of that kind of bold and decisive inquiry into our own nature and reality itself. With time, the benefits of personal liberty can become self-evident and those who aspire to apprehension of true freedom can then translate that into the social sphere by way of action and example It is a dynamic embrace of the kind of change that we need in tumultuous times like these.
Jonathan Webber is head of philosophy at Cardiff University in Wales, UK. His latest book is Rethinking Existentialism (2018).
Is there any point thinking about what to do? It is often said that our judgments and behaviour are really caused by immediate intuitions and gut feelings, with reasoning happening only afterwards. But that claim misses an important point. Experiments also indicate that reasoning shapes the cognitive system that produces future responses. The more we reason that something is good or bad, right or wrong, attractive or unattractive, the more influential that attitude becomes over our intuitions and gut feelings.
Aristotle would not be surprised. His ethics rests on his idea that character develops in precisely this way. Aristotle’s view, however, does not explain how your thought and behaviour can be influenced by social stereotypes that you do not endorse in your own reasoning. We can understand this process better if we turn to the idea of sedimentation developed by three French philosophers in the middle of the 20th century.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty coined the term ‘sedimentation’ in his book Phenomenology of Perception (1945). He uses it to describe the process of taking on information about our bodies and environment in a form that enables us to act intelligently without much attention, effort or thought. Just as a river accumulates particles and deposits them as sedimented structures that direct the river’s flow, argued Merleau-Ponty, so we accumulate information as we go about our lives, which gradually and unconsciously builds into a contoured bedrock of understanding that guides our behaviour.
Merleau-Ponty’s work helps us to see how our behaviour can be influenced by stereotypes that we do not agree with. For if this sedimentation process is insensitive to whether we are interacting with the world itself or with media representations of it, then stereotypes occurring regularly in our media will become integrated into our worldview along with knowledge of the real world. Because he focused on knowledge, Merleau-Ponty did not develop a theory of the sedimentation of goals and motivations. He did suggest that these might become sedimented in a similar way to knowledge, but he did not explore the idea in detail.
https://aeon.co/ideas/sedimentation-the-existentialist-challenge-to-stereotypes
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