paradigms and beliefs

i'm thinking more about why i didn't believe in mold fumes for so long, when i have had bad air in here for at least three winters now. why was it that several different sources - people i knew, and articles on the internet - mentioned mold as part of indoor air pollution - and i didn't believe it?

this is the same as a doctor who doesn't believe in using some kind of alternative medicine procedure, and they want to use fda-approved drugs instead. or whatever mainstream medical treatment. they just cannot believe in the alternative viewpoint, and they will deny it and deny it for a very long time.

i guess it's partly because i had an incorrect image of how it worked. i imagined mold could only be an indoor air pollutant if it was being blown through ventilation shafts. and nobody had described exactly what it looked like, felt like, or where it was located. maybe i had to see it written as a story: 'i opened the cabinet door, and nearly puked and passed out.' stumbling, fumbling, and mumbling: that's the phrase to describe what it does to me. i trip over things, i drop whatever object i'm holding, and i have trouble talking. the mold wasn't in a vent. it was just sitting there, a big splotch on a wooden shelf. air shouldn't blow through there - but it does - because there are holes where the pipes go into the wall, and the walls are cracked and drafty.

but i'm still wondering, why don't people believe something that somebody tells them? partly because i had to experience it myself. i also was influenced by hearing voices in my head talking about it for several weeks while 'we' were trying to figure out what was going on with the fumes. during all the 'talking' about the subject, sometimes the mold theory was mentioned. it was like having discussions with other people.

there is the phenomenon of 'discredited person,' somebody you just don't believe, in general, no matter what they say. i can be viewed that way because i claim that i hear voices in my head, and therefore, everything i say must be crazy and wrong. so it seems like i would never do that to somebody else - i would never discredit them as 'not knowing anything' in a general way, because everyone else looks at me that way.

however, i can think of the people who told me about mold, and i had conflicts with those people that led me to discredit them. one was my ex-boyfriend, who mentioned mold to me several times. because of the fighting and the problems in our relationship (some of it having to do with controversial things like 'hearing voices'), i was less inclined to believe information or advice he gave me. another person was the mcdonald's store manager, who turned out to be a thief, who was stealing credit card numbers or something - i didn't get the details - who eventually got fired. the store manager had said he cleaned out the moldy sink, and it 'went in one ear and out the other' because i had no respect for him and didn't believe anything he said. but that one particular thing, he was right about - it probably was caused by the moldy sink.

when i finally changed my mind about this, it was after reading information that came from a 'trusted source,' a female who has similar chemical sensitivities and similar mind control experiences to my own. if somebody has similar experiences, i'm more likely to believe them. (by the way, doctors are noticing that chemical sensitivity seems to happen more often to females. there are theories about why that is. it isn't because 'women are all crazy.' they think it might be because women have two X chromosomes, maybe, and the gene that makes you vulnerable to chemicals could be something on the X chromosome. that's only one theory.)

i think about doctors and how stubborn and closed-minded they are, and how frustrating it is when i'm sure that i'm knowledgeable about something, but people i care about don't believe me. i can't convince my dad to buy physical gold and silver, for instance. he wants to keep all his investments in the 'imaginary world' of paper and computers and banks. we disagree about this and he probably won't change his mind until it's too late. i am the 'discredited source,' the crazy daughter who hears voices and has chronic illnesses, and therefore nothing i say could possibly be true.

doctors believe other doctors, and they believe their official authority figures like the fda, but they don't believe their patients, and they don't believe anecdotes, or people blogging on the internet. i'm saying, i'm guilty of doing exactly that same thing, but in reverse. i went for years not believing something, because i had some kind of conflict/disrespect involved with the particular people who were telling me about mold over and over again.

anyway, i'm interested in the phenomenon of 'people changing their minds about something' or 'new beliefs' and 'new interpretations.' a paradigm shift. i had one. it's important to know how to make those happen.

also, it teaches me to be patient with people who disagree with me. maybe, a few years in the future, they'll change their minds. it takes lots and lots of incidents and people telling you something, over years and years, to finally change your beliefs. i read about this in the world of advertising. there are these little popular sayings, and i don't have time to go look it up, but they try to teach you that an advertisement will be ignored the first time, then briefly glanced at the second time, etc, and how they will laugh at it, make fun of it, etc, but after seeing it twenty times, they finally agree with it.