How We Decide What to Believe
We don’t know if monkeys, dogs or spiders have belief systems, but we know that humans do. Perhaps the transition from ape to human was the development of and awareness of a personal belief system.
What we believe to be true about the world we live in, our community, our nation, and ourselves is one of the most important things about us. It determines much of our personal behavior, our votes, our interactions with others, and our fears and hopes for the future. What I’m wondering here is if we do enough to think about how we create and modify our belief systems. If we do, how do we decide what to believe?
It seems we live in a time of increasingly splintered and fractious belief systems. Long held beliefs are being tossed off at ever increasing rates, and the passion and antagonism surrounding conflicting systems threatens to erupt into wars between nations, but also within our nations, states, communities, friends and even families.
We should take note that this is not entirely normal. As I read history, most humans have lived within communities and cultures that shared basic values and ideas about what was real. Outliers holding significantly different views were not only considered oddballs, but were often ostracized, exiled or even killed.
