I believe that beliefs are perilous and dangerous (that is, perilous to the self and dangerous to the other). If, as Socrates averred, the unexamined life is not worth living, then surely, by comparison, the unexamined belief is lethal. It is hard for us, the supposed superior species, to believe that the human mind is not consistent, unified, and reliable. Unless we recognize that our minds are fragmented and contradictory, we cannot understand how dangerous our beliefs are to ourselves and to others.
What is a belief? It is a psychological state in which the believer holds a proposition or premise to be true. It is a mental sentence or statement one says to the self about someone or something that is held in the mind to be a true thing. It is a feeling or subjective energy, enhanced through repetition and programming, that shapes thinking processes and behavior. Beliefs govern our living experience. Interestingly, we often believe something that has long ago been proven, by our own experience, to be false or untrue.
How do we know that what we believe is true? More fundamentally, how do we even know what we believe? How many of our beliefs are turned over, examined, and analyzed? Can our beliefs withstand comprehensive and honest scrutiny? What do we do, as individuals, when our beliefs are contradictory and unsustainable? Do we readily give up the beliefs that are proven to be false?
Judging from the fanatic behavior of individuals and large groups on this earth, I would say that it is very difficult for some to abandon their beliefs even in the face of repeated realities that these beliefs are destructive and false. Politics, economic systems, educational theories, and religions come to mind. One does not have to look too closely at any "ism" to know that behaviors associated with the "ism" are often punitive, harmful, and many times lethal. An "ism" is a distinctive system of beliefs, theory, myth, and doctrine that guide people's behavior as individuals, groups, or social and political movements. Think about capitalism, fascism, ageism, sexism, racism, socialism, communism, pacifism, terrorism, altruism, nihilism, buddhism, catholicism, satanism, feminism, voyeurism, heroism, elitism, sadism, optimism, pessimism or any number of these "pre-packaged ideologies" and then decide if these are all good, all bad, or somewhere in between, and think about how these "isms" have affected our world thus far.
I recently read this astounding statement: If we had a computer the size of the known universe and that computer had been calculating since the beginning of known time, it would only now be arriving at its 300th noncontradictory belief. This mindboggling supposition leads me to believe that our individual human minds are full of contradictory beliefs and that our puny thinking processes have a very hard time discerning these contradictions. In fact, it may be nearly impossible for the human personality to recognize its own contradictory beliefs. To help reason through this, try a little sanity experiment: Make a list of the things you believe, and see if any contradict another. Sometimes just the act of writing beliefs in black and white helps us to examine them more closely to determine if we really do believe these things or if these beliefs are a knee-jerk or automatic (pre-packaged) response that we've "inherited" or were raised with and really make little or no sense when put under the microscope of honest scrutiny.
The philosophical study of the relationship between knowledge and belief is called epistemology. How do we reconcile what we believe with what we know, and is there a one-to-one correlation between the two? I think there is not. Many times I have heard someone say, "I can't prove it, but I know it's true." If something is true, then someone must know it based on real experience. If no one knows a thing, then is it still true? That resembles the old Zen-like question about the sound of one hand clapping or whether a tree falling in a forest that has no listener actually makes a noise. How many of the beliefs we hold so dearly actually represent nothing more than wishful thinking? And what is the difference between a belief and a delusion? A delusion is psychiatrically defined as a fixed false belief. A delusion is believed to be pathological (the result of an illness). Whereas so-called "normal" people (defined as sane) have perceptions that are somewhat based in reality, a delusional person has an apperception (illusion) that is not reality-based. In clinical practice, psychiatrists tend to diagnose a belief as delusional if it is either patently bizarre, causing significant distress, or excessively preoccupies the patient, especially if the person is subsequently unswayed in belief by counterevidence or reasonable arguments. How many of us are significantly distressed by our beliefs? If so, is it better to "give up" our beliefs rather than be stressed by them, especially if we can't ascertain whether or not our beliefs are actually true?
It doesn't take much effort to see that we are surrounded by delusional people, and often that enemy is ourselves...unwilling or unable to examine the truth and consequences of our own beliefs.
In "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There" (1871) by Lewis Carroll, (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), the White Queen says, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
And we still believe in them even after breakfast.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI have always thought that a tree falling makes a sound even if no one is there to hear it, because a tree is heavy and dense and large, and gravity pulling it to the earth would certainly cause it to make not only "a" sound but a pretty big one at that, because it makes a big noise when there is a witness. The science in that speaks to me. My belief is based on fact, in that case. Why would it not make a noise? Who cares if a human is there or not? We put way too much importance on ourselves and how we stand apart from the rest of nature just because we can think and make choices not based solely on instinct like most of the other animals with which we share this earth space. I am turning more to science for my answers the older I get. It is futile to pray to an entity which doesn't respond most of the time, and when we think it does, perhaps it was just a coincidence of events. The people who do not question their belief system, thinking they are solid in it and don't need to, are the ones who make the most noise defending it, when they SHOULD question it for relevance and truth and legitimacy. What they really should do is understand that it is a coping mechanism when things go wrong in their life. They look to their belief system to get them through it by reading pacifying passages from a book of fairy tales. When one's back is against the wall trying to convey why one believes the way one does, it forces one to admit that they do not have proof and it could be all made up and handed down because it is easier to go along than to question because people who question are considered troublemakers and eventually can be ostracized by the believing group. When asked to explain why they believe, they fall back on The Big Mystery of God and how we are so inferior to God that we cannot possibly understand his ways and what his intentions are. There are cop-outs everywhere. It makes one feel stupid when one cannot explain why they believe in something or have any proof to support their claim. They also have a fear factor of hell if they do not believe. That can be enough for some people to believe, even if they question it deep down.
I have had my belief system challenged throughout my adult life, and from the slow embrace of allowing other thought patterns to enter the equation, I came to realize that I really didn't need this belief system anymore, because I realized that I, and I alone, am able to HELP MYSELF out of jams by making smart choices and looking for opportunities to better my situation, instead of waiting for a magical solution to present itself to me.
We may never know what it's all about, especially if this is it. If our spirits do not go on after death, then we will never have our answers to the age-old question of not only why we are here, but, also, how did we get here in the first place?
Great essay. It should be submitted to a periodical for publication.