Received Ideas in Quotes 24

Most of the day we are on auto-pilot, relying on mental short-cuts and rules of thumb to navigate the world. (Briwilliams.com.au. But he doesn’t mean we stomp about like zombies or robots – and when he says “mental short cuts and rules of thumb” I suspect he means received ideas, those that must be true because everybody says so. And “we live on auto-pilot” is a received idea in its own right. Surely nobody thinks it means that we are automata. I suspect that they are about to segue seamlessly to "Don't be self-conscious" or "Don't over-think things".)

They had become so used to saying the same thing… that they no longer thought about what they were saying. The same phrases were simply trotted out without thought. (The Guardian, 12 January 2013)

It’s common these days (perhaps it always has been) to sneer at our ancestors as gullible fools and talk about how enlightened modern society is. (Commenter at Guardian.co.uk, July 2012)

The knowledge people have often comes from faith or tradition, or propaganda, more than anywhere else. (Agnotologist Robert Proctor, bbc.co.uk)

A lot of online discourse is driven by received narratives that people swallow whole and regurgitate. (FB)

Whenever you work in an area that challenges people’s wrongheaded, cherished beliefs, it can be difficult. But sometimes it can also be a matter of life and death. (Elizabeth Loftus on false memory)

Beliefs shape attitudes and motives, guide choices and actions. (Aeon.co, Daniel DeNicola)

Our received ideas about Roman history derive from 5th century authors. (@byzantinepower)

Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little trains of other people’s opinions, which never overtook one another, and never got anywhere. (Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit)

If you go through higher education, then you have a greater chance of being socialised into a certain set of attitudes and "common-sense" beliefs. Those beliefs may be mistaken, but you're likely to take them on just as surely as the subject of your degree. (@Robin_C_Douglas)

“But this is something new!' said Mrs. Munt, who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those that are portable." (E.M. Forster, Howards End)

As for Mrs Munt's niece Margaret, who has contributed the new idea (that money "pads the edges of things"), she gets married and begins to " 'miss' new movements, and to spend her spare time re-reading or thinking, rather to the concern of her Chelsea friends."

More here, and links to the rest.