I had the opportunity to chat about philosophy over lunch with a friend on campus (a professor of philosophy). He’s one of the most humble people I know and a wonderful mentor (of many, many folks). We were continuing a conversation from a past lunch and the subject naturally moved toward why I’ve been in the dumps and haven’t been able to shake it.

Let me take a step back to give you context. People don’t change their mind about core beliefs based on facts. By core beliefs I mean anything from whether you believe in a god, believe in standard cosmology (shameless plug for the Electric Universe), or believe that a certain kind of behavior is good/healthy. As a math guy, I would love for facts to rein supreme, but they don’t. Both because it’s not that simple (real life isn’t so cut and dry) and because our brains don’t work that way.

A person only changes a core belief because of a nagging doubt, and even then only when that person is willing to confront it rather than suppress or ignore it. Here’s your official sounding definition for the day: cognitive dissonance is when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs.

Presenting facts and counter arguments naturally lead a person to opposition – the way to help someone truly change is by asking questions. Specifically, ones that get a person to tease out their contradictory beliefs in a way that encourages them to take action. It’s frustrating because a person can’t be made to change or see that they are wrong through force of logic – even asking the right questions isn’t enough. A person has to be willing to confront the contradiction when found.

And that’s where I am right now. I tend to hold strong opinions and if I see a problem, I want to fix it. Using some good army imagery, I’m the guy who grabs the flag and says “let’s charge that hill.” Over the last two years my life has radically changed and suffice it to say, I have a flag to carry now. This blog and my consulting arm, Humanity & Business, are how I’m figuring out what flag I’m carrying and how to carry it. It largely consists of two things: getting Christians to reject the garbage that’s invaded our Christian culture, and then quite separately calling on all people to address the growing socio-economic divide in our country. My “hills to charge” are opportunities to help transform businesses and educate people (I expect in churches, but who knows?).

It’s not easy to work through; I work at a place that should be the perfect fit for pointing me at a hill to charge, but it’s not. Instead, I’m being tripped up, turned around, and told there’s no hill to charge. And that dissonance is driving me crazy.

I’ve got my flag figured out. I need a hill to charge; but it’s gotta be the right one.