What information have you come across in life that has really opened your eyes to a new perspective, made you question some really basic assumptions, or changed your life in some way. Information can be anything from books to TV to articles to just regular conversations. Brown vs board of education would be one example (it made people question standards they took for granted for hundreds of years) and an eye opening book would be another.
For me I would say that the books the obesity myth and health care meltdown really made me question ‘common sense’ assumptions about things like obesity and the US healthcare system. Another really eye opening thing I discovered in the last couple of years was nutrition therapy, covered in books like mind boosters. I’m sure i’ve come across alot of other eye opening positions and bits of information, but I cannot recall them at the moment.
The book Lies My Teacher Told Me was VERY eye-opening to me. Until I read that, I was someone who literally believed everything I read, everything I was taught in school. The book really showed me that there is a BIGGER PICTURE to nearly everything…that school is not the end-all be-all of knowledge.
Snopes and The Straight Dope books also changed my way of thinking and of seeing the world as well.
I think I’ve learned more after being exposed to the above than I ever learned in school! (not counting the basics of reading,writing and math)
Edward Said’s book Orientalism crystallized a lot of ideas on cultural relativism for me. I read it in my senior seminar as an anthropology major, so a lot of its components I was already aware of, but it clarified those components and gave a great deal of examples. Irritatingly, many of those examples were in untranslated French, but I got the idea. It didn’t change my life, but it made me question my goals as an anthropology student and the motivation behind the study of anthropology in general, which I’d previously thought of largely as “gee! people are neat! Let’s study them!”
Without going into details so as to try to avoid stirring up shit, since 1995 (especially since 9/11/01), various political events; seeing the repercussions in my own environment (including the Internet) and the world; and revelations about what was going on behind the scenes in the run-up to WWI and during the Cold War. And I do mean eye-opening and life-changing.
I was in voice class last week, and the instructor told everyone to be conscious of perception coming in rather than going out. To make the distinction between merely looking at something and actually taking it in. I realized that the image I saw before me was merely a construct of my mind, and became aware of the existence and presence of objects and people in a manner that feels independent of my physical senses. It’s like the first shot in The Matrix when Neo sees everything made of code, except everything’s made of colorless, mottled, shifting, glowing, something-or-other. Under the image constructed by my mind. I can now truly feel the presence of inanimate objects using only my sight. It requires attention and a little concentration, but I can now open my senses this way at a moment’s notice. I don’t know if most peole already perceive the world this way, but I didn’t until last week.
About two years ago I found out that a medicine that is used to control seisures also helps to control compulsive behaviors such as overeating, shopping, and smoking. After sixty years of blaming myself for my failure to control compulsive behaviors, these are not a problem for me anymore.
At age 13, after I made some thoughtless comment about gays while I ate dinner, my dad told me my aunt was a lesbian. About two seconds later I realized those were stupid things to say and think, and that was the end of that.
Discovering I didn’t believe in god was without a doubt the most life-changing thing I ever learned.
I learned a lot of things from Robert Anton Wilson about quantum physics and Buddhism that changed my life. I don’t go for any of it anymore - I’m still interested in both subjects, but I don’t think I actually agree with him about anything. Still, it made a difference and was a major part of my development. The most specific thing I learned about from both Wilson and studying Buddhism later was Indra’s Net.
Thanks, kunilou