From Belief to Ideology

If you got nothing new to say, re-say something old. And, fortunately, there’s a lot out there that I’ve said that I can choose from.

Some of it embarrassing, but some of it, actually quite illuminating, in my not-so-humble opinion…

Here’s one on moving from belief to ideology.

I remember some self-help guru (I believe it was Tony Robbins) said that it really doesn’t matter if your beliefs are true or not, as long as they’re useful.

While that seems to be a slightly cynical statement, it does have a tinge of truth.

Where do our beliefs come from?

Well, they come from our experiences, traditions, parents, culture, etc.

If you grow up in a christian home, you’ll be inclined to adopt similar beliefs. Whereas if you grow up in, say, a muslim home, you’ll be more likely to adopt a quite different set.

If you grow up in communist China or Russia, you might not hold fast to the idea that western capitalism is the path to prosperity.

Does that make one belief right and the other wrong?

No, because the truth is that no matter what you “believe,” you cannot prove empirically that an opposing or different belief is wrong or untrue.

Beliefs are based on a certain degree of faith. The stronger that faith, the stronger the belief.

They’re not all religious. You can have beliefs about many things…politics, business, personal development, and so on.

In the previous 173 posts (referring to the old CRG blog) I’ve provided a smattering of my own beliefs. I know that they probably seem to be uncentered and disorganized. Some liberal, others conservative. Some religious, others secular.

But you see one thing I don’t believe in is “labels.” I’m not going to try and organize my beliefs in such a way that folks would label me conservative or liberal, religious or secular, right or left-wing.

We tend to get far too concerned that our beliefs have to be consistent with a given ideology. That’s never a good thing.

Why?

Because it limits what you allow yourself to believe in.

There was a time when believing that the earth was anything but flat would get you labeled a heretic…maybe even executed.

Today, if you grow up in the bible-belt southern U.S.A., believing anything but the conservative or fundamentalist christian line may not get you executed, but it will get you exiled from membership in the club.

So we disallow ourselves from believing anything outside of the confines of the accepted ideology.

And once you begin to think that your belief is absolute, empirical truth, it must mean that what everyone else believes is a lie (in short, heresy).

And that naturally leads to the idea that other “untrue” beliefs should be suppressed, quelled, or vanquished.

But I “know” that the human race’s search for truth is never served by suppression.

If it weren’t for the brave-hearted souls who dared to believe differently, in the face of the threat of condemnation or expulsion by the community of shared beliefs, then we would still think the world is flat.

In short, we would never know real truth.

Isn’t it curious how we tend to destroy ourselves over ideologies as opposed to scientifically knowable truth?