I was looking at some words this morning, starting with the word Bias, and this is the dictionary definition:
Bias:
“a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group, compared with another”
And within this the word Prejudice:
“a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience”
When I then look at what exactly is a ‘preconceived opinion’ – I would define it as follows:
Preconceived opinion: Where positive and negative associations to things, which manifest as positive and negative attitudes and / or feelings and emotions about things, become the basis of conclusions and judgments about things Here I think it’s important to note that in my experience, having positive or negative associations connected to something, doesn’t necessarily always manifest as obvious ‘feeling or emotional’ energetic experiences. It can manifest more as one’s ‘attitude’ toward something. Like, whether one tends to immediately see something as valid and true / worthy of support / applause, etc vs. invalid and false / worthy of derision, etc – without actually having investigated, considered, or applied reasoning to the point.
To me, positive and negative preconceptions indicate a gap in awareness as missing information — where there are more dimensions to something than we’re currently seeing. So I think it’s important that we practice being aware of when we access Preconceived Opinions about things, people, groups, topics of discussion, so that we can prevent ourselves from missing opportunities to apply reasoning, investigation, consideration, critical thinking — striving for a more well rounded / accurate understanding of a thing, rather than settling for ‘our experience’ of a thing. I don’t think opinions are inherently bad / wrong / impractical. In fact I think that having working conclusions about things is simply natural, as we are in the process of pushing to understand how something works. When opinions become a problem, is when we become defined by them – because then we’re going to want to protect our opinions, instead of remaining open to the possibility that we don’t yet fully see / know / understand something.