Contexts Options

While in deep meditation, I had a striking revelation. Accidental rhyming there. Anyway. That revelation is that our thoughts are HIGHLY based on context. Context is like a perceptual, judgmental filter through which every thought gets poured, and accounts for much of the difference between people's beliefs and opinions. Let me explain.

The easiest example of this to fathom is the whole optimist/pessimist thing. An optimist sees a certain event as good, a pessimist sees the same event as bad. Yeah, yeah, nothing new. But wait, extrapolation yields great things.

Here's a trickier one. Let's say one person has spent years reading Buddhist teachings and is rather knowledgeable (entrenched) in the field. Then one day they pick up a book on general magick. Assuming they buy into its contents, they are then likely to place their conception of magick into their larger context of beliefs, which for the sake of simplicity we'll say are mainly Buddhist. This theoretical person might have a (simplified, for the sake of this post) conception of reality that looks something like this:
"Reincarnation through many lives, with a final goal of enlightenment. Experience of human attachments and desires is necessary in order to experientially realize that detachment is the only way to attain liberation. Distractions from liberation include the material desires, the carnal desires, and other spiritual means by which to manipulate one's surroundings. When one first starts to become spiritual, one might be tempted to pursue a religion like Wicca and bring good things to themselves, but that is simply another level of distraction from the pursuit of enlightenment."

Ok, now another theoretical person. This person has spent years reading general magick books, and is entrenched in this field. For ease of argument, let's say they're rather fond of Aleister Crowley in particular. Then one day, they pick up a book on Buddhism. If they buy into its contents, it then factors into their larger conception of reality, which might look a little something like this:
"Do what thou will. If everything is just a cycle, as religions like Buddhism acknowledge, then why bother to release desires? Why not assume command over their fulfilment?"

Given that this is a theoretical situation, I'm sure you can still see what I'm getting at. Assimilation of new information is totally based on the context we (usually subconsciously) place it in. Assimilate information, and you add to your stock of mind fodder. Change your context, and you practically change your world.

Psychology calls that "framing".

For instance, a politician will talk about either talk about "dole bludgers" or "the deserving poor". Both apparently refer to the same thing, but each is a different spin on the same subject, depending on whether that politician is anti- or pro-welfare respectively. Similarly, in the US, the Democrat's "tax cuts" are logically little different in principle to the Republican's "tax relief", but the Democrats are "cutting government income" and the Republicans are "providing relief to the poor" (*ahem*).

The idea of framing comes from Agenda Setting theory (which is partially why I used political examples). The most famous quote by Shaw and McCombs (the progenitors of this theory is):

"Here may lie the most important effect of mass communication, its ability to mentally order and organize our world for us. In short, the mass media may not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about."

How you frame what you're talking about will cause others to think along a specific line. For instance, a Creationist could say something on morality that at a fundamental level you may not disagree with, yet often enough that will remain irrelevant since you can still find the way they put it intellectually insulting, because they'll put a fundamentalist Christian spin on it.

Similarly, if your Buddhist were to try and talk to my fundamentalist Christian on their religious philosophies, they might actually be saying the same things (since at a fundamental level, the teachings of Gautama and the teachings of Jesus are very similar) and yet still disagree with each other.

Context is definitely a very important thing. What ideas you link what you're saying to will cause people to react differently.