What Iconoclast.blog Is About
Beliefs create who we are individually and collectively. The first step of change is to be aware of them.
The second step is to leave them behind.
Beliefs inform personal and collective identity, establish perspective, explain biases, screen out inconsistent information, attract conforming experience, deflect non-conforming information and experience, and make decisions for us that we only rationalize in hindsight.
Those things are useful: they tame the wild and advance civilization, help us locate our bewildered selves and draw us into protective communities. We need that to survive and thrive. But they can be too much of a good thing. They make us willfully blind, show us only what we will see and hide what we won’t. They build our silos, sort us into polarities, close our minds, cut us off from compassion, empathy, and meaningful discourse.
Faced with the prospect of change, beliefs guard status quo against the possibility that something else is possible — which is precisely what we have to believe if we’re after change. Trouble is, to believe just that much threatens all our other beliefs. Which means that, if we want something else,
We need to become iconoclasts.
The Online Etymology Dictionary says that “iconoclast” originally meant “breaker or destroyer of images,” originally referring to religious zealots who vandalized icons in Catholic and Orthodox churches because they were “idols.” Later, the meaning was broadened to “one who attacks orthodox beliefs or cherished institutions.”
Our beliefs are reflected, transmitted, and reinforced in our religious, national, economic, and other cultural institutions. These become our icons, and we cherish them, invest them with great dignity, revere them as divine, respect them as Truth with a capital T, and fear their wrath if we neglect or resist them. We confer otherworldly status on them, treat them as handed down from an untouchable level of reality that supersedes our personal agency and self-efficacy. We devote ourselves to them, grant them unquestioned allegiance, and chastise those who don’t bow to them alongside us.
Doing that, we forget that our icons only exist because they were created out of belief in the first place. In the beginning, we made them up. From there, they evolved with us. To now and then examine, challenge, and reconfigure them and the institutions that sustain them is an act of creative empowerment — one of the highest and most difficult gifts of being human.
Change often begins when that still small voice pipes up and says, “Maybe not. Maybe something else is possible.” We are practiced in ignoring it; to become an iconoclast requires that we listen, and question the icons that warn us not to. From there, thinking back to the word’s origins, I like “challenge” better than “attack.” I’m not an attacker by nature, I’m an essayist — a reflective, slow thinker who weighs things and tries to make sense of them. I’m especially not a debater or an evangelist — I’m not out to convince or convert anyone, and besides, I lack the quick-thinking mental skill set.
I’m also not an anarchist, libertarian, revolutionary… not even a wannabe Star Wars rebel hero, cool as that sounds. I was old enough in the 60’s to party at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but then it failed like all the other botched utopias — exposed as one more bogus roadmap claiming to chart the way back to the Garden.
Sorry, but the Garden has been closed for a long, long time.
A friend used to roll his eyes and say, “Some open minds ought to close for business.” Becoming an iconoclast requires enough open-mindedness to suspend status quo long enough to consider that something else is possible. That’s not easy, but it is the essential beginning of change, and it can be done.
Change needs us to be okay with changing our minds.
All the above is what I had in mind when I created Iconoclast.blog. I am aware of its obvious potential for inviting scoffing on a good day, embarrassment and shaming on a worse, and vituperation, viciousness, trolling, and general spam and nastiness on the worst. (Which is why I disabled comments on the blog, and instead set up a Facebook page that offers ample raving opportunity.) Despite those risks, I plan to pick up some cherished icons and wonder out loud what might be possible in their absence. If you’re inclined to join me, then please follow here on Medium, or click the follow button on the WordPress page for email delivery, or follow the blog on Facebook. I would enjoy the company.
Originally published at iconoclast.blog on January 12, 2019.
