Hi
First, don't search for the relation between the photo and the text, (though if you find any, tell me) the photo is there just because I feel more relaxed when there's a photo in my post. Many times it is related to the text, sometimes the text is about and around the photo and sometimes it's like this.
Let's get to the point, why do we believe in what we believe in? Why do we values things and opinions that we value?
Generally why do we do what we do and think what we think?
Let's expand the question first. (Probably by asking some more questions) What defines our lives and the way we live?
I think it's our habits and our believes (those believes that result in actions). How these two form? Environment? Family? Media? Our own thoughts and experiences?
I guess the last one is not the major one for most of us.
As I look around me, I see that we have many common values, maybe not same for all of the people but if we categorize people base on the values, probably 99 percent of them fall in to 3-4 categories. Which I conclude that media is playing a very big part here. Not just social media or tv, the way that everything that we can't see with our own eye is represented to us. We used to live in a world that most of things people knew was the thing they had seen with their own eyes, and experienced them selves, bit is it still the same?
And who gives us those information?
Are there many different people with very different values or different looking people with basically same values?
[Now it's time to relate it to bikes] For example, (based on the country) 50 years ago was a good time to have a car, because public transportation was not good, and streets were not jammed with traffic, but now using bike makes much more sense. But we still try hard to buy a car and try harder to pay for the maintenance.
And where our believes come from?
Let's go for ridiculous example here. So some people still believe that earth is flat and are trying to make it sound reasonable, while the rest of the world is making fun of them. But have the majority that believe earth is round experienced something that proves their believe? Have they tried to figure it out for them selves or are they just repeating what NASA (and some other) says? If next week NASA says that earth is flat (and keep it that way for few years) , how many will change their believe? If U.S. officials say we faked moon landing, how many will believe that?
I guess many, most of the people, maybe not 70-80% of them but 55-60% (these numbers are wrong anyway, why play with them?)
We are busy working, entertaining our selves that we don't care and we believe what is easier to believe, nowadays it's not a good time to believe earth is flat, because you will be ridiculed, it's easier to go with the mainstream no matter if it's wrong or right.
Wether earth is flat or not or moon landing was faked or not, doesn't really effect most of the people, at least not on a daily basis, but there are other believes that do. So it's good to evaluate our values once every while to check how true are we to our selves? How are we affected by media? And I think a good base line is need. Comparing what we do and what we need to do, what we buy and what we need to buy could help.