A Zeitgeist is formed through the available sources of information. The types of media, which are primarily determined by the inventions from communication technology, that are available in an era not only constrain or expand the sources of information but can also dictate the content flowing through those media sources. The Weltanschauung held by you, me, and most everyone else is shaped by these era delimited transformations in the prevailing Zeitgeist.

If these assumptions be true, then consider the following. What do you know? What is the content of your mind? What do you reason about? How do you reason? How do you know what you know? Rather, how do you come to know what you know? Why do you trust the available sources of what you know? What alternatives do you have? If you do not know what you do not know, then how would you know if the content that comes to you through the only available sources should be questioned? Are there certain areas of concern or content foci that one should be more inclined to question than others? How would, could, or should you make such choices?

If the Zeitgeist shapes your Weltanschauung, your knowledge of and view of the world, then by implication it has, not just ‘a’ but, ‘the’ dominant role in shaping your beliefs and, of course, ‘a’ dominant role in shaping your attitudes as well. Furthermore, by implication, many other mental, emotional, and motivational aspects of your personality are shaped in a similar manner as well. The fact that people differ in these aspects of their personality simply means that other, randomly distributed aspects of their environment work to determine which paths among the many possible conveyed by the available sources and content of a particular era or Zeitgeist you wind up taking. You merely take one from among the many that nevertheless are constrained by the Zeitgeist. That one path that you take is a function of the very limited possibilities coming from the randomly distributed aspects of your environment which happen to be relatively insignificant by comparison with the constrained and determined paths conforming to the nature of the Zeitgeist.

If you are born into an era, as of course everyone is, and therefore born into its Zeitgeist, you do not compare and question as though you, as a child, were able to entertain the possibility of alternative Zeitgeists. As children enter their first schooling years, they do not have the possibility of engaging in such questioning. In adolescent years, some question the methods or utility of the content of their education. A very few may even question the veracity of what they are being taught. How many, when being taught in a course on American History, would question whether there could have been a viable alternative to fighting the Civil War. Some might question the moral justification for the way the American continent was taken from the Indians, but have you ever known anyone to question whether the Civil War had to be fought? Does your mind not recoil against such a thought? If you grew up in a religion or, even more specifically, a denomination of that religion have you ever questioned, on any grounds, why you believe, or refuse to openly dissent from, the religion of your upbringing? Some few children question whether their parents are really their ‘real’ parents and wonder if perhaps there is some unknown couple out there somewhere who are really their parents. Most children will never for a moment entertain such a possibility. On the other hand, how many children, or more importantly, how many adults question the modern world’s conception of family or parenthood? What unknown territory might you be venturing into if you undertake such questioning?

Are not the very content and form of your questions dictated primarily by the Weltanschauung you adopted from the Zeitgeist? And so it goes with almost every aspect of your Weltanschauung.

Your Weltanschauung is derived from the Zeitgeist. Would you dare question any aspect of either? Does it threaten your identity, your security, to do so? Can you question any aspect of either? You are permitted! That is a part of our common Zeitgeist in this era in this nation, regardless how inhibited you may feel from doing so. So, you can; it is difficult; but, mainly, do you care to?