Belief

"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant."

— H. L. Mencken

I find beliefs one of the most beguiling notions of the time. Too often do fears boil down to an unfounded hope or fear. To me, a belief is an an operational mechanism that can be useful if properly addressed. Rather than taking up the common idea that beliefs are a guide for social coordination, such as relating with people of the same religion or philosophy, consider that ideas and concepts are useful to perform certain tasks, just like a hammer and a nail. By utilizing the appropriate tools in the appropriate context you can hang a picture on the wall or determine the distance to the moon. But when ideas are gathered together outside of the appropriate context without the proper foundation, that is, unfounded hopes and fears, pictures fall off the wall and the moon might as well be made of cheese. Honestly assessing phenomenological experiences with a spirit of healthy skepticism circumvents belief systems.

"Depends on what your definition of 'is,' is."

- William Jefferson Clinton

Working with the ideas of Robert Anton Wilson, there 'is' a pretty easy definition of what 'is' is. He, drawing from the work of Alfred Korzybski, a semanticist of the early 20th century, agreed that the verb 'to be' was one of the ifluential ailments of the modern mind and determined himself to solve this dilemma. Coining the term maybe-logic, R.A.W. gives us a solution to any and all issues we might have when identifying too directly with any mere concept, that is, when we're too strongly committed to a particular yes or no, is or isn't, true or false. The fundamental tenets of maybe-logic dictate that every statement is true in some context, false in another context, meaningless in a third, true and false in a fourth, and neither true or false in a fifth. Take the sun example from my post on intellectual honesty. It is not that anyone was ever wrong or right about anything, only that the contexts change. Scientists who postulated that the sun must be made from an inordinate amount of coal were not wrong about how much energy we receive, that some thermal or combustion mechanism was occurring, or that life ultimately arises by its beneficence, only that they hypothesized a less correct causal mechanism than we have at our disposal today. Don't forget that our theories for explaining the sun are still hypotheses and not irrefutable facts.

"There is no such thing as fact, only interpretation."

- Nietzsche

While the fruits of our imaginations will ever persevere to ripen into stimulating ideas and concepts, they are not the basis of existence but rather its by-product. It is certainly a misnomer to give the convenient contrivances we use as tools an elevated status on par with the inscrutable mysterion called life. A great example R.A.W. cites from Korzybski, is that the territory is not the map. This is meant to dissuade people from identifying the with symbols on a map as the reality at hand rather than the existential terrain of the human condition. The ideas we use to explain reality are not the origin of reality, insofar as those ideas are after-words to what enabled their elaboration in the first place.

My favourite technique for analyzing beliefs is to render them on a spectrum of utility for the task at hand. It is without doubt that concepts like god and evolution are useful in the construction of world-views, for example, but ought not become a covert agenda or a stick for beating people over the head with, as is the tradition of the past. Science and religion have both attained dogmatic status, for the most part, since dissidents in either camp are relegated to the most remote fringes if not exiled altogether. However, in mitigating the forcefulness that a belief might inculcate in certain people, the information that it is based on might be useful for a wider perspective. By calculating beliefs' positions on the spectrum, their impacts are lessened and can be appropriately addressed. The information contained therein will not be hampered by the belief's particular outlook.

Beliefs are necessary, just as intentions, agendas, perspectives and methods are too. This is not to say that the necessity of having beliefs ought occlude the other necessities of life. I can believe as much as I want that there will be a turkey dinner with all the fixin's waiting for me when I come home from work every day, but unless I make a concerted effort by having a clear purpose fully articulated and delineated, no dinner. Beliefs have to be back by intentionality.