11 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 10 hours ago by Magical Realist.)
I am coming around to the idea that believing in anything, quite aside from and in fact irregardless of what is believed in, is a form of inauthentic and fear-based being that must be resisted at all costs. Belief just as a mental state that makes us want to defend it and selectively validate it in what we pay attention to and what we ignore.
I don't think humans are naturally hardwired for such malware, having spent large swathes of my life devoted to belief systems that were totally delusional and stunted my growth into a more conscious and fulfilled human being. Evolutionarily-speaking belief came along later after our nomadic sojourns across the African plains. It is the software that we got downloaded with once we settled down in stable agricultural societies that turns us into complacent and passive and functioning members of the tribe. Prozac for the subversive thinker. Soma for the questioner of sacred truths.
The question then becomes "can one even live sanely without a structured belief system to filter out a reality that everywhere happens with no regard to us whatsoever?" That's the experiment we all have to make here. To see if such is even possible in a world that daily placates us with comforting lies and spurious half-truths or else paralyzing us with baseless fearmongering all designed to keep us as robotic and controllable as possible.
“Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.”― Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins
"Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it’s there it doesn’t require your belief- and if it’s not there why should you believe in it?”— Terence McKenna
I don't think humans are naturally hardwired for such malware, having spent large swathes of my life devoted to belief systems that were totally delusional and stunted my growth into a more conscious and fulfilled human being. Evolutionarily-speaking belief came along later after our nomadic sojourns across the African plains. It is the software that we got downloaded with once we settled down in stable agricultural societies that turns us into complacent and passive and functioning members of the tribe. Prozac for the subversive thinker. Soma for the questioner of sacred truths.
The question then becomes "can one even live sanely without a structured belief system to filter out a reality that everywhere happens with no regard to us whatsoever?" That's the experiment we all have to make here. To see if such is even possible in a world that daily placates us with comforting lies and spurious half-truths or else paralyzing us with baseless fearmongering all designed to keep us as robotic and controllable as possible.
“Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.”― Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins
"Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality. After all, if it’s there it doesn’t require your belief- and if it’s not there why should you believe in it?”— Terence McKenna
