Belief systems

[PolyPeter]

I died, came back, and now belief systems seem silly.

To me belief systems now feel like training wheels on a bike. Once you learn how to ride, you better ditch them so better tricks can take place! 

Why would anyone believe in anything when you can know directly?

Common responses:

- Fear of going crazy.

- Fear of pain.

- Fear of being wrong.

- Fear of Truth.

 

Extracts from conversations I've had with people:

"It is impossible for a human to live without a belief system" 
"Questioning my beliefs about belief systems??? I don't want to go crazy, thanks"
"If it were possible to see reality from outside all belief systems, that would be painfull and horrible"

 

[LastThursday]

It's an interesting thought: do you need beliefs at all?

I think beliefs allow you just to get on with living, without the burden of having to work everything out from scratch. Beliefs are heuristics for living. You can have good and bad beliefs, if you define them as being helpful for you on average, or from a more collectivist standpoint, helpful for your community in general.

But beliefs can be more fluid, if you work at it. I think it's also possible to have context dependent beliefs (even if socially that seems odd), which naturally loosens what you hold to be true.  You could even pick and mix beliefs as it suits you day-to-day. Although, I think it would take effort to live that way, it's far easier to be more rigid in your beliefs.

I think it's probably nearly impossible to live without beliefs, because you have to live in a society with social rules and laws, and you need quick heuristics to judge what to do in many different situations and not get paralised with indecision.

Edited 18 hours ago by LastThursday

[PolyPeter]

Yes inded, I can see that. Beliefs can be useful for survival or practical things.

But that does not mean Beliefs should not be modified over time or that the act of believing itself should not be observed.

I mean, a dog walks around, takes a nap, barks at a bird, sleeps. A dog acts instinctivley, influenced by the context, and the biological needs, but they never go around believing if it's gonna rain or be sunny.

When you say this 

6 hours ago, LastThursday said:

I think it's probably nearly impossible to live without beliefs,

Why nearly and not 100%?

[LastThursday]

8 hours ago, PolyPeter said:

Why nearly and not 100%?

If you're constantly observing your own beliefs then that erodes your confidence in their truth. You will still go around holding beliefs, but you know are only partial truths. You carry on believing, but don't believe in your beliefs, you just know that they're useful like a screwdriver. <- hopefully that wasn't word salad.

Dogs don't believe in screwdrivers, and you could live without one, but hell, they're useful for screws. In other words, we deliberately live in vastly more complex worlds than dogs do.

[UnbornTao]

Yeah, recognizing a belief for what it is tends to undermine our certainty in it; it is seen as invented and adopted, and therefore not true in itself.

But how deep does belief go? We might assume it is just a trivial notion we hold in our minds. There may be deeper layers to it, though. 

What do you take for granted about any aspect of reality? What do you think is true about X and Y? (These are meant to be contemplated.)