Belief systems. Do they doom us as a species?
I've been thinking about some things for a long time. Those things are not easy for me to clearly elucidate - the main ideas become fleeting, amorphous, more about feelings than easily written words. But a book that my wife and I read a bit of each morning - Hal Borland's Book of Days - has helped me more than anything else come to terms with what I've been seeing, especially in the last decade or so of my nearly 60 years. The evolution of the internet, social media, the decline of print and TV news (made far worse by cable so-called "news"
, the current state of politics - both local, and world-wide - all bring on this feeling.
We each have a belief system - a paradigm - that we use as a lens to assess the world. Even here at DU - our paradigm is largely liberal, largely Democratic. But within that are separate beliefs - about those things that cross politics - guns being a major one, but certainly it is easy to come up with a host of others - that lead to conflict, bickering, anger.
Of course, we've always had belief systems as soon as humans evolved to have the ability to think. It is how each of us makes sense of our world. Hopefully, observations, research, education, and time lead to more knowledge, and our belief systems evolve more toward the "truth" (whatever that is).
When we met and talked face to face, or picked up the phone, when the news was on an hour a day, for better or for worse, a basis of friendship and understanding was formed that, for whatever reason, made the clash of belief systems less obvious, perhaps.
But we are in a different place. Facebook, Twitter, discussion sites like DU and all of the others, and any other of the social media platforms bring our belief systems into direct contrast, often conflict. And of course, each of us feels we are right - that we have the answer. Now throw in race, sexuality, gender, politics, money, greed, power - and religion (which is the source of some of the most iron clad belief systems of all) - and I just wonder if we are finally getting to where we just are incapable of thinking of the world as a collective, as a group of people of great diversity that optimally will all work together, seek and find common goals, common good.
I was listening to Diane Rehm today and toward the end of the world news roundup, a caller got on the line and asked the panel if they thought that religion was a root cause of the problem - he claimed to be an atheist, and from where he sat, each side was demonstrating exactly what the other side was accusing it of. It boggles the mind - all of those killed through centuries and centuries because of their particular belief systems, and their own belief that it was their right to impose it on others.
So, where are we - and where can we possibly be going? We have belief systems that are convinced that it is our right to completely, environmentally screw the world. Or to apply caste systems to people so that they can never rise up. Or....a million other ways to put the point.
I am generally an optimistic person - and when I think small - my own life, hobbies, pursuits - I am happy. But when I think of where the world is going, how it communicates, what my two daughters are experiencing and will experience - it is harder for me to be hopeful.
Which brings me back to Hal Borland's book. He speculates that humans - we, as we are known today - could be an evolutionary branch that will ultimately fail - because our attributes - belief systems - will not work in concert, but will eventually bring about our own demise.
And then - we will see what life form survived and can perhaps - hopefully! - do better than we did!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Indeed. Even if most seem to forget, and not learn from, that history.
more for me to ponder....
