A Mirror of Belief
We often think of ourselves as free-thinking individuals, forging our path with clarity and choice. But step back for a moment, are your values truly yours? Or are they inherited, reinforced, and protected like heirlooms passed down through invisible rituals? From the words we speak to the causes we champion, much of what we call our “self” might just be the residue of repeated exposure, social approval, and deep-seated fear.
Contrary to popular belief, values are not immutable truths waiting to be discovered. As the philosopher David Hume argued, they emerge not from pure reason but from experience, formed by impressions, reinforced by reactions. A child punished for lying doesn’t learn the morality of honesty from logic but from feedback: pain, disapproval, withdrawal. John Dewey and William James expanded this idea that values are adaptive tools, not sacred truths. When a value “works,” we keep it. When it fails us, we seek another. But the cycle never ends.
The Epistemology of Value. We Build What We Believe
In epistemology, the study of how we know what we know, there’s a long-standing tension between rationalism and empiricism. Hume, a sceptic of innate ideas, believed our moral beliefs arise from repeated sensory experience. These impressions, particularly emotional ones, form our values.
Pragmatists like Dewey and James took this further: values aren’t static principles but living tools. Reinforcement means they’ve helped us navigate reality. If a belief in hard work leads to social approval or material gain, it gets reinforced. But when the same value is challenged or leads to burnout, alienation, or failure, we are forced to question it. This is the pivot, the crack in the cocoon.
And yet, this reevaluation is painful. It demands we loosen our grip on what once gave us meaning.
The Dialectic of Reinforcement and Challenge. Hegel and Beyond
Hegel described the evolution of ideas through dialectic: a thesis is met with its antithesis, leading to a synthesis. This triad can describe the entire journey of a value.
Reinforcement acts as the thesis; it solidifies belief. Over time, reinforced values become doxa, as Pierre Bourdieu called them: assumed truths that form the backdrop of culture. Neuroscience supports this, too. Confirmation bias strengthens neural pathways, making us more resistant to opposing information.
But when challenged by experience, evidence, or crisis, values enter dissonance. Leon Festinger coined “cognitive dissonance” to describe this discomfort. We can respond in two ways: defend and entrench (e.g., the backfire effect), or adapt and evolve, as Piaget described in his theory of accommodation.
However, the synthesis isn’t always honest. Antonio Gramsci warned that dominant systems absorb critiques just enough to maintain control. A false synthesis is not resolution but assimilation.
Cocoons as Existential Armour. Fear and the Flight from Freedom
Why do we cling so tightly to our values, even when they no longer serve us? Because they shield us from something far scarier than being wrong: the void.
Ernest Becker, in “The Denial of Death,” argued that humans create symbolic identities, nations, religions, and traditions to shield themselves from the terror of mortality. Values offer more than moral direction; they offer immortality. To belong is to matter. To uphold tradition is to be remembered.
Heidegger called this retreat into collective values the “they-self” (das Man). Rather than face the rawness of our freedom, we hide in conformity. Sartre named this comfort “bad faith”, a lie we tell ourselves to avoid the weight of authentic choice.
The Machinery of Conformity. Social Epistemology and Mimicry
Our cocoon is not spun alone. Cass Sunstein’s work on echo chambers shows how social groups insulate themselves from opposing views, creating epistemic closure. We don’t just believe, we filter what is allowed to be questioned.
René Girard took this further. He argued that desire itself is mimetic; we want what others seem to want. Values, then, are not reasoned conclusions but contagious habits. Their transmission feels sacred. Durkheim saw this too: group rituals sacralize values, turning them into untouchable truths. To question them is not just dissent, it is heresy.
The Politics of Morality. Power in Disguise
Michel Foucault dismantled the idea that morality is neutral. For him, what we call “truth” is deeply entangled with power. Norms, especially moral ones, are enforced by institutions, from schools to prisons to the media.
Victorian sexual norms were not moral discoveries but tools of control. Similarly, colonial empires justified their atrocities through the moral narrative of “civilising the savage.” Morality, far from being universal, often masks domination.
The Trap of the Cocoon. Progress, Paralysis, and the Price of Clarity
Cocoons give stability, but they resist transformation. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Climate change, systemic injustice, we resist change if it threatens our core values.
And here lies a paradox. Ethical relativism warns against imposing our views. But pure relativism leads to paralysis. On the other hand, universalism can be tyrannical.
To escape the cocoon, Sartre argued, is to embrace anguish: the burden of freedom. Most choose comfort instead. They perform autonomy while walking on inherited paths.
Are We Doomed to Cocoon? Evolutionary and Cognitive Constraints
There may be evolutionary reasons for all this. Shared values promote tribal cohesion and reduce conflict. Even our cognitive structures filter reality through preloaded beliefs. Neuroplasticity declines with age, making true re-evaluation harder over time.
But all cocoons are not equal. Some are open, some sealed. Karl Popper imagined an “open society”, a system resilient not because it resists critique, but because it welcomes it.
And yet we must ask: is this cycle truly endless? Will our values ossify until rupture is the only option? Can we recognise the cocoon as a cocoon? And does that recognition make a difference?
Seeing the Walls, Holding the Centre
We live inside cocoons of meaning spun from experiences, reinforced by culture, guarded by fear. They give us comfort, identity, even purpose. But they also filter what we see, dull our curiosity, and pit us against those who believe differently.
The deepest freedom may not lie in breaking every cocoon, nor in blindly reinforcing them. It may lie in seeing them for what they are: a scaffolding for meaning, not meaning itself. To know when to protect our values and when to let them break, that is the quiet, ongoing work of philosophical life.
And in that work, perhaps, we finally become our own.
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