9.3 White Hats, Black Hats

With so many options available on how we see the world,, many of us tend to gravitate toward 'shortcuts in how we decide what is real or unreal, true or not true, good or bad, right or wrong, etc. Habituation and binary viewpoints from childhood allow us to more quickly make our personal choices without investing time and energy into individual evaluations. During the movies of my youth, it did not take long to learn that in western movies the 'good guys' were the ones who wore white hats. The ''bad guys' were the ones wearing black hats.  This became visual shorthand for us to know which person was good so we could support and cheer their actions. This visual shorthand also allowed us to label the others as bad guys where we were encouraged by our peer group to offer an occasional 'boo'.  As adults, it can take lots of time and energy to unlearn the habituations we bring from childhood.