On Belief

Belief is a very deep topic, I am afraid I may be inadequate to the task of treating it with proper, deserving reverence, but I tried my best and feel satisfied with the result. It is an incredibly important topic to have explored concisely enough to understand simply and appreciate the implications carried within. Too many problems in the world stem from not having a grasp of this built into our knowledge with both technical and emotional depth. 

First, I should define belief. Belief is trust so deep that you are willing to hold to that trust in spite of countervailing evidence that should break the bond of trust. If you trust a leader you expect them to do right by you. If you believe in a leader you are prepared to follow them to the gates of hell. Because, you know, regardless of what things look like to you, the leader is the right person to follow. He will take the right path, even if you cannot see it. Belief allows us to move through and if we must, even live in, places that would otherwise tear us apart. Belief keeps life going when all hope appears lost, we are small creatures, we cannot see the glimmer of hope that lies just over the horizon.

We need belief. We need belief in ourselves; mankind, and ourselves as personal individuals. We need belief in the best people around us, that they stay the course and will save the world. We need to believe in each other, that there is a best of human nature in all of us, that It can be brought out, even if it is not in evidence. This belief should never be haphazard, of all our leaders in the world today, many of them do not deserve belief, but there are people in the world who do. We do need to find them.

We also need to believe in the world. A world we cannot believe in is one that cannot have hope in it. Hope is belief in the future, if the world cannot be trusted to be good then we cannot believe in a brighter future during the dark times. There are always going to be dark days, but life can be bright and beautiful as well. Even in the darkest night the sun is just over the horizon.

People who believe deeply, intuitively know this. If the alternative to belief is nihilism and hopelessness then belief is definitively better, regardless of if we must fight and die over it. They will continue to believe in what they believe in, even if it has flaws, even contrary to the evidence, because it is right for them to do so. We cannot change belief or improve the world by replacing it with despair. Nihilism is eternal despair, death is better. But we can believe in ourselves, and with that belief in ourselves as human beings we can build a world worth believing in, worth living in, a world worthy of dying for, even. This is the task laid out before us, this is our calling.

We must carefully believe in ourselves, to find that within us that is deserving and elevate it. We must also question everything down to the bedrock to see if it is deserving, if it is, we are right to believe in it. That which is not deserving we must watch carefully. The world comes in pieces, changes in pieces, we build with pieces. Those pieces are not all going to be trustworthy; good to believe in deeply, but we can still live with them happily. Lions are magnificent, dangerous beasts, the world would be a lesser world without them. Despite the danger, we can see a lion resting in the sun and know it not to be a lion out on the hunt. However, it would be unwise to believe that lion isn’t just as dangerous and to turn one’s back on it, or to run away from a resting lion with unjust fear, or to attack that lion because it is a lion. The proper response is to watch the lion carefully while you share that place with it and then choose to live in a place that is not a den of lions. So it is with the world, humans and belief.

It is deeply, unconscionably wrong to destroy belief itself. We need to update our belief structures, true. But as trust structures, not merely as structures of knowing. This is a task that requires the deepest reverence and respect. This is not a process to be taken lightly, not to be done cheaply or acted on foolishly. In the past I think it has been.

This is why, as nature dies around us, we squabble over the last fish. It doesn’t need to be this way. We can put the fish back, let it return to the water to spawn a new generation to fill our nets with bounty. Sadly, this will only happen if we believe it can happen, that the fish we release will find a mate out in the vastness of the ocean, despite being the last fish. Now is the time to find that which becomes true if we believe in it, then believe in it and make it true.