Thinking about Believing
Beliefs are integral to human life. It would be almost impossible to live without believing so many things we believe in, even though it is sometimes hard to decide the set of beliefs to believe. I started pondering on some questions:
What is a belief? Is it a psychological state? Why and how are beliefs formed? Can they change? If yes how easily?
I think, that the wikipedia article on beliefs gives a cue, it says:
Beliefs form in a variety of ways:
We tend to internalize the beliefs of the people around us during childhood. Albert Einstein is often quoted as having said that "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Political beliefs depend most strongly on the political beliefs most common in the community where we live. Most individuals believe the religion they were taught in childhood.
People may adopt the beliefs of a charismatic leader, even if those beliefs fly in the face of all previous beliefs, and produce actions that are clearly not in their own self-interest. Is belief voluntary? Rational individuals need to reconcile their direct reality with any said belief; therefore, if belief is not present or possible, it reflects the fact that contradictions were necessarily overcome using cognitive dissonance.
The primary thrust of the advertising industry is that repetition forms beliefs, as do associations of beliefs with images of sex, love, and other strong positive emotions.
Physical trauma, especially to the head, can radically alter a person's beliefs.
However, even educated people, well aware of the process by which beliefs form, still strongly cling to their beliefs, and act on those beliefs even against their own self-interest.
Nevertheless, I think there is some substance in the following thought ascribed to Gautam Buddha:
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
I think, it would be much wiser to believe in that, then to believe that all thoughts are communicated automatically to everyone. Hence, only think positively or that there is an omnipresent being, that monitors all our actions and gives rewards and punishments at His sweet will. Or that science is supreme and infallible.
Rakesh Mohan Hallen