Julia Sweeney discusses something I’ve also noticed.

Seven: Mostly, people are not introspective.

This has been a really profound realization for me. I was raised in Catholicism. I thought while everyone was praying they were thinking deeply about the hardest questions. Turns out that’s not true. I don’t think they are really thinking about anything. I don’t think–this is sad and maybe cynical–but I don’t think most people are very interested in why they do the things they do, and why they believe the things they believe. I know that makes me sort of a pessimist, but I came to this conclusion through thousands of e-mails and conversations.

When I was younger, I also thought that most people introspected as much as I do; that they examined why they do what they do, what they are trying to achieve, how their actions effect the world and how the world effects them in turn.

As I met and talked with more people, I realized that the exact opposite was true. Most people hardly think about these sort of things at all. Most people, when asked to justify what they believe, will offer almost nothing in response. Usually, it’s little more than “It feels right” or “My family was raised that way,” etc. I am not saying these are prima facie wrong reasons to believe something, or behave a certain way, but for me, there has to be much more than that.

Like Sweeney, it startled me to find out the things I spent years thinking about, most people had not thought about in any ordered way at all, ever.

The entire piece is here.

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