An inclination or prejudice towards something or against it, is what is being biased. There are media biases, political biases, cultural biases and the rest. In today’s polarized world, nothing is left untouched or ‘undiluted’. There is the far ‘left’ and there is the far ‘right’. Everyone is trying to push their own agenda, twist the story in a certain paradigm, present what suits them and sometimes, present what is not the truth. So, in such a scenario, how is one to make ‘sense’ from what one hears or reads? How does one know what is the truth, the essence, (tattva) when one is only surrounded by opinions (matta)? How does one know? What is knowing? These questions are important and must be addressed by schools and in the formative years. What we find in the education system today is a very heavy reliance on information and diverse information. No problem with diversity of information, no problem with information either, however, how does one process this information to understand the thing as it is and not through colored lenses is something that we find missing. What role does the mind play in knowing, understanding? You look around and you hardly find any school worth its salt even close to addressing this.
All prejudices and biases are essentially a vritti i.e. a certain modification, twist, distortion in the mind as a result of which one does not perceive (in the real sense of the word i.e. yatha bhutam darshanam: seeing thing as is, is what is to perceive) the world as it is. There are vrittis that are essentially biases, namely, the first one-pramana i.e. dual perception-belief, right and wrong. Then you have inferences (anumana), experts, external authority etc. An understanding based out of these will eventually be a bias. Then there is, Viparyayah, wrong information, disinformation, all kinds of propaganda etc. All this intended towards creating a particular bias. So long as the human mind is in vritti, it cannot possibly perceive. Let us consider some of the common biases prevalent in today’s world:
The most prevalent of all biases is what is called confirmation bias. Under the influence of this bias, people seek information that affirms their pre-existing belief, a direct function of pramana-vritti. In other words, mind knows through what it already ‘knows’. What is the outcome of such a thinking? One becomes rigid and closed in their understanding. Rigid and closed understanding is detrimental in order to see the world the way it is. Still, at a larger and collective level, the possibility of solving some of the complex socio-political, socio-cultural, socio-economic problems gets diminished. Closed and rigid thinking, thinking that relies on pre-existing beliefs limits our capability to think differently and to come up with creative solutions.
The second most prevalent bias is the coverage bias. Governments and media, especially, cover topics and agenda disproportionately. You would, in some cases, even find twisted stories to fit a certain narrative, a direct function of viparyayah vritti. When you constantly get un-equal and lopsided information or opinion, you tend to form the same opinion and limit your thinking. You do not labor, to get to the true picture or look for that which has been deliberately hidden.
The third prevalent bias and the one that can have an immense impact on the listener, or the reader is the terse bias. This bias essentially means that only a certain ‘clipped’ information will be disclosed or broadcasted, leaving the nuanced and the context completely cut off from what is being shared. Some example of such a bias in practice is the sound bites, quotes etc.
The fourth bias, you can easily identify such biases in thickly populated countries and groups, is the group thinking bias. People confirm to widely held worldview and ‘fit’ their own thinking in the collective thinking. This can also be referred to what is commonly called the ‘herd mentality’. This reminds us of an incident that happened in Turkey where, reportedly, more than 50 sheep committed ‘mass suicide’. It so happened that one sheep suddenly leapt off a cliff, only to be followed by the rest of the flock. Such incident happened, again in Turkey, where some 1500 sheep jumped off a cliff, some 450 were killed. We follow people, we follow what the others think never to question our own thinking.
There can be many more biases that we confront (if we are conscious) in our day to day living and interacting with the world. A bias is a modification, twist in our understanding thereby limiting our responses to solve some of the pressing issues that the world faces today. So, is there a way out? What has Integral learning to do with biases?
The perfection of the mind:
Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness-this is one of the five principal phases of a true mental education in the integral education scheme of things. The human mind is still too imperfect to lead beyond itself and yet it is the mind that feels its limitation and years for knowledge that is infallible, logic that is unerring and understanding that is complete. It is the mind that has to resolve its own distortions, spins, modifications and come to a state of dissolving itself in an utter silence so that a higher wisdom may replace its flawed working. This is called, in Patanjali yoga sutra, chitta vritti nirodh, cessation of all vrittis (disturbances of the mind). One of the objectives amongst others of integral mental education would be to perfect the mind’s functioning within its present powers and capacities. The capacity of the mind to expand, look at various mechanism (including social and psychological) from various dimensions and angles as possible and as the mind does this, it does this with perfect equanimity (samata).
The human mind has two basic ways of learning, one is the analytical way which means that the mind breaks the whole into parts and studies the part for example, when you break up the entire airplane into parts i.e. wings, engine, doors, fuselage, tail, cockpit, engine etc. you are essentially studying the parts (whole being the airplane). This, however, will not explain how the parts contribute to the working of the whole or why and how the whole functions independently of its parts. The synthetic works by combining the parts into the whole, so in this case, when you combine the parts together to create the airplane, you are studying the airplane in its entirety. The dependency of one part to the other and how the entire ‘eco-system’ of the airplane work together to make the airplane fly and the interplay of one part with other parts would be a synthetic way of learning.
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