Belief
Beliefs are the prearranged organized filters to our perceptions of the world. When handled effectively, beliefs can be the most powerful forces for empowering your life. Conversely, beliefs that limit your thoughts and actions can be devastating!
Where do beliefs come from?
Although many factors are involved in the formation of beliefs, only two of them will be discussed here:
- Beliefs Fostered Through Knowledge
Environmental Influence
Your environment has the single biggest impact on your beliefs.
- Where you were born and raised
- Your parents “parenting” style, skills and interaction
- The TV and all other forms of media
Below are two scenarios that illustrate Environmental Influence on Beliefs:
Scenario 1
People that are born and raised in poverty, those who see little more than despair, are obviously going to find it more difficult to "Believe" that they could be successful.
Scenario 2
People born and raised in a society that constantly encourages them:
- To not question authority
- To accept zero responsibility for their actions
- To work hard and keep their nose clean and they’ll get ahead
- To keep up with the Jones’s
- To stay in style - Clothing, Hair, etc.
- To embrace the latest FADs
- To watch the TV’s "Hottest New Shows" and especially the NEWS every day to ensure that they are hit with an endless barrage of nonsense, negativity, and of course - ALL of the Commercials
- To feel insecure about the way they look, feel, and act
- Feel guity for being born
The list goes on and on and on
Add to all of the above the absolutely inordinate amount of information, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and outrageous acts that they are bombarded with every single day from every direction, and the confusion, anxiety and despair that is brought on by all of it.
Finally, add the interaction with friends, family and everyone else they come in contact with (who have also been influenced by all of the above), and there is a very high probability that these individuals will become the typical, easily controlled, unthinking drones described in this website's opening quote.
Beliefs Fostered Through Knowledge
The individuals described in the two scenarios above are not without hope because knowledge can help them to overcome their limiting beliefs. Knowledge is the greatest way of breaking free of the shackles of a limiting environment. Direct experience, behavior modeling, reading, and other educational resources are all forms of knowledge.
How Does this Apply to Free Thinking?
If you wish to become a Free Thinker, you must learn how to Overcome/Change some your current beliefs, or in some cases "Suspend Your Disbelief" in order to acquire specialized knowledge that can transform you into Free Thinker. Below is a short debate that illustrates this point.
A Short Debate
Mr. A) There is only knowledge and hypothesis.
Doubt Enables Reason. Beliefs Enable Self-Deception. The act of believing is the engineering of one's own redundancy. If you believe then you will never have the chance of knowing.
Believing in something is accepting it as fact without any actual reason to do so. Having knowledge about something is a subjective value judgment based on careful reasoned analysis of observation and experience, cross-referenced with a wide variety of accounts of that observation and experience from other people. Knowledge, being a subjective judgment of objective reality, is readily mutable in light of new and decisive observations and experiences. Belief, on the other hand, requires no actual thinking in order to indulge in. It is set in stone. Belief is the Enemy of Knowledge!
Mrs. B) I like that reasoning, but this point troubles me: “Knowledge, being a subjective judgment of objective reality, is readily mutable in light of new and decisive observations and experiences.”
Is that really knowledge though? If today I say I KNOW that 2 plus 2 is 4, but tomorrow I find new evidence that 2 plus 2 is 5, I can hardly say that yesterday I KNEW that it was 4, but today I KNOW that it is 5. One of those statements must be wrong. The "truth" (if there is such a thing) cannot be mutable. It either is, or it isn't. If I know that 2+2=4, then it cannot, does not, and never will equal 5.
Mr. A) Ah, but knowledge isn't truth. It is just knowledge. "The Truth" is an idealized concept that doesn't have any verifiable existence. In order to accept the truth you have to.....wait for it....."Believe".
Knowledge isn't an end in itself. It’s a journey. On journeys, perspectives often change quite considerably as new experiences and observations are encountered. Once something new comes to light that affects the validity of your existing knowledge, you either modify your knowledge accordingly or slip into the Entirely Unreasonable State of "Believing".
It’s comfortable to believe, just as it’s comfortable to sit down and watch TV. Someone who's perusing knowledge is always on their feet. Which one is in the best position to adapt? Which one is the slave?
Mrs. B) You said, “I have no beliefs. There is only knowledge and hypothesis.” Then you actually do believe in something: Knowledge and hypothesis.
Mr. A) Knowledge and hypothesis aren't beliefs; they're methods to pursue knowledge.
Mrs. B) Nonetheless, you believe that knowledge and hypothesis are methods to pursue knowledge....Anything can be a method to pursue knowledge.
Mr. A) Wrong! You can pray or "Believe" as much as you want, but you will gain no knowledge by doing so.
Mrs. B) You will gain knowledge in knowing that you won’t receive anything from praying. Therefore there is knowledge in praying. You will become wiser when you realize praying does nothing.
Mr. A) Someone can believe anything (and often do!). "Reason" is a means to knowledge, which is not mere belief.
You suggest that anything is a means to knowledge. I don't find that "Reasonable". It's the same old story of trying to use reason to disprove reason as valid - what Dr. Nathaniel Brandon called "The Fallacy of the Stolen Concept":
It is a common error.
But it is an error.
End of story.
Quotes
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible." Bertrand Russell
"There are two kinds of restrictions on human liberty -- the restraint of law and that of custom. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion."
Carrie Chapman Catt
"Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side."
"Whenever you find you are on the side of Majority it is time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain
"He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all un-wisdom."
"The most dangerous of all lies is the lie everyone believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is a hydra-headed tree of unreason with a thousand roots. The lie that even intelligent persons accept as fact - the lie that has been inculcated in a little child at its mother's knee is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence!" Arthur Desmond
