Belief System: Can we trust our belief system? What is your belief system?

[LightSun]

"Can we trust our belief system? What is your belief system? Where do our belief systems originate? What has the highest impact in determining our belief system? How can we change our belief system? How can people believe in truths without evidence?"


"A Belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses it is an idea that possesses the mind." Robert Oxton Bolton

"Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings - that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide." Buddha

"The world that we seem so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system,
let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds." William James

 

[LightSun]

"We all have within our root system a bunch of convoluted fantasies or beliefs of that which is called reality. We have a belief system riddled with at most half-truths. We need to undertake a journey called self-discovery is assessing these fallacies and be willing to change, thus to grow. He or she who are rooted in the past beliefs are a hindrance with social progress.

Indoctrination into dogma comes from multiple sources. Dogma conceivably can occur in a family's system of beliefs as well mores. It also comes from another from another direction like patriotism and religious beliefs, all of this before the person possesses or can be taught critical thinking."

“There really in the beliefs we hold sacred as well dear in heart lie cognitive distortions of fact and reality thus an invalidity. Very much of what is truly so fervently, passionately and in the held systems of belief are only opinion and unsubstantiated truisms.

In fact they are in factual sense merely hypothesis with a way one lives and so views our world. It really is a in metaphor explanation the perceptions we think to be true blown 'Unto a Big Theater Screen' called life. There is not any that manifestly do know truth for the truth and the real nature of so called reality is above our knowledge. It is certain that we shall indeed never stop growth and with this new perception and theory on a nature of what is called real will readily make some new evolution.

Humanity must have an open soul absorbing the newest discovery. We need desperately an outgrowth of religious indoctrination which happens being many upon untold hundreds and even unto many thousand ages old. Definitely we have a necessity of an outgrowing past wisdom following the Constitution with its amendments as times change. Hence it is a growing document and not stagnant and grounded in dogma. it does change and is a changing document. Religion on another basis holds to be children needing an outgrowing and to sprout wings of fight freed of dogma, belief system that were placed even prior of them to be written. Holding on to this fervently is a sign of quite the limitation in growth.

We need a belief so to anchor plus put a direction as well a meaning for life but there can not be an expense with critical and open-mindedness to new ideas, honor the diversity in people and a respect for people's varied perception in reality.”

"(1) We all live in different perceptual realities and for each of these people living in these different perceptual realities, it is their reality.

(2) Each has a different path.

(3) If something doesn't make sense on the surface there is an unconscious reason. It is because you are using your own vantage point or your definition of reality, your own perceptual reality.

(4) Thus we condemn or judge or fear what doesn't make sense to us. But see we are different bubbles of perception, all of us bouncing our own personal version of reality against another perceptual realism and truism, for them at least."

Nihilists popular in the 1800' had the concept of believing nothing but we need a foundation or risk a form metaphorically typed insanity. We all need a foundation of belief about the world we live in. However this is but the start point. There are some who hold on to set beliefs and don't change, adapt or evolve. It's not possible for they do not see outside the lenses of their limited perceptions. They in effect hold on to dogma and aren't in preparation of societal changes. In order to change plus grow to evolve into a phoenix and take wing one must be as a bending Willow Tree.

To choose to take the position of the might Oak Tee secure and in its comfort of per-conceptualized beliefs, they are as unyielding as a mighty Oak and will only bring invariably be left behind in the mists of time as unyielding and pitied. In a type parable a wind storm does come. The mighty Oak won't bend, so in this scenario will become wrecked. The Willow shall duly bend to weather the storm of life. It can adapt, change and incorporate brand new vistas by change. It does not take the position of always being right.

Rather the Willow grows in the sunshine of change. All the adversities of life will only give it new lessons to ponder and actualize, it cannot be shook. All the huffing and puffing of life brings will not stunt its invariable growth to maturity, transformation and evolution of the human conscious.

'Stumbling blocks to change as well more. This is for either believer or non-believer to convert the other. it's not gonna happen. it's your reality and not theirs. Are they going to change your belief systems? Of course not.' In essence, you will not change one iota another point of view and neither will they to you. It's an endless monkey chasing it's tail. Rather accept each others differences, learn communicate and diversity and work together.

Arguing is simply bashing your own head into a wall. And if you are in a 'debate' with an individual. Both parties are bashing their head into a wall till blood starts streaming, but your both endlessly bashing different walls. One is at the North wall and the other the South wall. Nothing accomplished for there was no bridge to connect to the other person's reality.

"(1) Our belief system have generational folk knowledge that does not possess scientific viability.

(2) Blind spots of awareness that we all have. Other people can see things we can't and so we have a tendency of scoffing, fighting, warding off and toward dismissive. It's not in our perceptual awareness and I might say a limited perception of a truism of what is real.

(3) Cognitive Dissonance prevents change because if a person is met with the unfamiliar, strange, different Etc. they are uncomfortable and so seek to disquiet the discomfort in a reactionary and not cognitively clinical examination to look within one's self first.

(4) Defensive Mechanisms designed to not look at areas inside us that might harbor pain and so we instinctively avoid this.

(5) Being of a Dogmatic and rigid stance. Thus not open and resistant to change.

(6) A serious gap in education and knowing the new dimensional of thought. As discussed earlier at least training a cognitive mindful approach. In addition teaching the lacking emotional intelligence's along with communication, conflict resolution, recognizing what a distortion in the thought pattern is and empathy.

(7) Lack of Empathy in society that may be of use to facilitate communication and open bridges to understand differences.

(8) We instinctively fear the unknown. We have a tendency to say to ourselves, Well I know my (reality) perceptual reality and if I do these changes it will be discomforting and I might lose out and I'll end up worse off. We don't want to give up what we already have as a right, possession, not equalization but up higher on a rung of a ladder and hierarchy as well ego steps into the room, sharing, or position of power.

(9) We all have a distorted lens of perception of reality. Think of the Hubble telescope. It's due to fear and hurts. So all of many various factors: The defenses, overcompensation and not addressing problem areas.

(10) We are a reactive species. it probably is in the DNA of 100, 000 years of our forebears. They had to be at constant vigilance. We aren't behaviorally adept with the more actualized proactive stance.

(11) it all begins in our childhood. Dysfunctional parents, and distortions and the faulty beliefs. The schema are then placed in the software I.E. our experiences. The more dysfunctional the more problematic.

 

[Lark]

Interesting thread idea, I'd just make two points. Critical thinking is one of those things which is probably a fundamental good but I seldom find agreement as to what constitutes critical thinking. For instance, for some people thinking will only qualify as critical if it attacks certain precepts, principles, ideas and groups, while defending others. Which begs the question when thinking ceases to be properly critical and then begins to be merely advocacy of a special interest.

I see it a lot when anyone who shares a story about conduct of a particular group or a ruling which is disfavourable to certain groups or group interests must preface it with either qualifications of their view, clarifications of their otherwise/in any case support of the same group or statements that they are "conflicted" etc.

Most of the people who I see who pride themselves upon not being fooled or suckered by what they consider to be others or popular beliefs have themselves done nothing more than adopt another set of beliefs which are not as distinct or different as they suppose. Most of the disputes, and the greater, deeper or more vociferous they are the more so I find it to be the case, are effectively the narcissism of small differences. Part of the reason I first developed an interest in typology, was that like marxism, freudianism, Jungian archetypes, sociology and some sociological psychology, ie micro-sociology, it seemed to be trying to discover "what lies beneath".

I even find that the idea which is most often presented is one which suggests all inherited knowledge, all enduring knowledge, is suspect and dubious and ought really, however, you may feel about it sentimentally, to be jettisoned. What matters is what you may innovate. Anything you can invent today for tomorrow will be better than anything which has served the majority of humanity for the majority of human history. That to change rather than conserve (unless its a rainforest someone is threatening to pave over) is always good, easy and preferable.

That logic to me seems flawed, that its framed as so uncritically good is troubling. I would, quite simply, assume that it is as wrong to suggest "this is new and therefore good" as it is to suggest "this is old and therefore good". It does make me think about what [MENTION=10714]Qlip[/MENTION] said a while ago about the forum being an interface between school kids and middle aged people, or something along those lines, as the idea that its a great idea to ditch what you learned from your parents and chart out uncharted value territory or terrain yourself does sound like an adolescent phase.

It could just be my age but I think that there needs to be some critical thinking done about critical thinking itself, the unwary application of criticism has myriad problems associated with it. There are people engaged in litigatious rackets who can not afford for their grievances not to be perpetuated, for instance, that's only one thing. The attack on inherited knowledge, memory or history is another, it does not seem to be universal but is instead the preserve mainly of particular groups, communities, nations, even ethno-cultures. I'm not sure if its to do with coping with legacies, pain based or what as yet, I'm still thinking about it.

 

[Mole]

Propaganda is ubiquitous, and we are all tempted to believe our own propaganda.