i hate beans… mostly.

“All generalizations are false, including this one.”

“We continually judge the whole only from the part that we are familiar with.”

When I was 7 years old I had a life altering moment with beans.

Yes, beans, just stay with me.

I despised beans, like most children my age and I wouldn’t succumb to any of the positive bean propaganda from my parents or family.

One day my grandmother sat me down told me to close my eyes and introduced my to the the best beans I had ever tasted.

Excited, I quipped, “what are these?”

She said, “They’re beans baby.”

But all beans are disgusting…

“Well, why would you think that?”

I didn’t have a response to her question because my pretense was moronic.

Judging the whole solely from the part that I was familiar with.

I denigrated all beans due to my limited interaction with them.

We rob ourselves of amazing experiences when we lazily submit to generalizations.

Generalizations are when elements or pieces of a person’s perspective become detached  from  the whole and becomes a representation of the whole.  For example, it is useful for us to be able to generalize from the experience of being burned when we touch a hot stove to a rule that hot stoves are not to be touched. But to generalize this experience to a perception that stoves are dangerous and, therefore, to refuse to be in the same room with one is ridiculous.

While generalizations are important for our survival, they can be a big hindrance to our growth, maturity and how we see the world.

All…

Every…

Never…

These are a few of the triggers for an incoming generalization.

To check ourselves against this we just simply put a question mark at the end of the trigger word.

All?

Every?

Never?

You can even add the words “Is it really ___?” to the trigger word.

The goal here is to ensure we obtain and retain an accurate picture of reality that isn’t clouded by our moronic generalizations.

I still hate most beans though, lol.