What happens when everything goes SIDEWAYS?
Will my life always be THIS WAY?
Why do we believe that what we consider to be “normal” will continue?
“What if?” questions should make us stop to think.
Find out more about “normalcy bias” by watching our two minute video (text below)
If anything is “normal” we know life will not always be.
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from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), hosts a weekly radio program with diverse groups of guests (1 minute video), and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).
Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT:
His car was stolen. My friend and fellow teacher texted to tell me what happened.
Why would my friend text me about his traumatic experience?
Dave had just recently asked me to initiate a discussion in his “Critical Inquiry” class.
I jumped at the opportunity. I love getting high school students to think.
We began the class with a clip from the movie Apollo 13. The movie portrays the true events of three astronauts whose space ship was damaged. There was a real possibility they could die before returning to earth. People at NASA were presented with a problem: literally, how to fit a square peg, in a round hole.
So after watching the clip, I asked the class, “How do you respond when everything you define as ‘normal’, goes sideways?”
I introduced the class to the concept of ‘normalcy bias.’ I defined the phrase this way. We tend to live life based on what is usual, what we’ve come to expect. We live our lives in a way that assumes “Life will always be this way.” So, we become predisposed to believing ‘My life will always be this way.”
The students and I then discussed questions like, “How do you respond when things don’t go your way?”
But the fun discussions really began when I asked “What if?” questions.
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- What if electrical grids no longer worked?
- What if grocery stores closed and you had to stand in line for rations?
- What if the banking security systems were compromised and your digital currency vanished?
- What if your only mode of transportation to school was walking? Five miles?
At the Comenius Institute we believe that we should meet our circumstances understanding that our biased view of normal may not be God’s normal for us. Even when our car is stolen.
For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.