Why stubbornness or dogmatism should be avoided

Stubbornness is a trait, which is seen primarily in children of a small age. When they want something, they will do whatever possible to force their elders to get them that thing. We all have seen such people and children around us.

People of young ages have the habit of being stubborn, because that is a childish quality. However, at an elder age, stubbornness takes a whole new form in a human mind. It becomes mental inflexibility, or the person remains stiff, and doesn’t want to learn new things.

Our mentality changes when we are mentally inflexible. We don’t want to learn and we think that only we are correct and no one else is. We take someone teaching us as someone insulting us, which is absolutely the wrong perspective of thinking. A sense of personal superiority comes into our mind. Personal superiority, becomes more like pride.

In the present world, the world demands people who are curious and want to learn new things. Our world focuses on exploration in the present, not on relying on old ideas and superstitions. As the time frame progresses, so does the technologies, and so should the mentalities of the people. Unfortunately, our people have successfully witnessed the progress of time and technology, but a very small percentage of the people are actually witnessing and progressing their mentalities.

Mental inflexibility is the first and the only step to become willing to explore and learn. It means that we must give up our pride and become students and teachers again to teach and learn with each other in the world. Internet is connecting the world from end-to-end, and hence, people from one corner of the world are meeting people from other regions of the world, which was not easy to do before the internet age.

If we look our scientists, they always are ready to disprove their theories. As we discussed sometime earlier, scientists are people who follow an algorithm of making theories. First, they make a hypothesis, or a statement. A statement as in something that is known around the world. Then, they verify it using an experiment that tests if the hypothesis is true or false. If they hypothesis remains true, then we accept it as a scientific theory and if the hypothesis becomes false, then we accept it as a myth. This is how we must develop our mentality towards newer things coming in our world and our life. We must first make a hypothesis, then test it by experimenting on that hypothesis, and only then come to a conclusion. We must not believe it completely until its properly verified. And when we believe something superstitiously and are not willing to change it, then it is what we can call mental inflexibility.

So if you want to be a part of the changing world, and help humanity progress ahead, make your mentality curious, ready to learn, and ready to explore.