The social nature of belief

[trenton]

I have been having a lot of mind blowing epiphanies that have dramatically changes my worldview. It has to do with the nature of belief. The primary function of a belief is social and only secondarily a function of what is true. Beliefs are social because they are designed to tell us who we are and are thus designed to be self validating. These insights from contemplation have helped me to go meta on everything I believe.

when a belief validates your identity, then it can become irresistible to believe something even when you logically know it isn't true. Take for example the belief that I am smarter than others. I logically know this isn't a smart belief because other people likely know something I don't. Intellectual arrogance is logically self defeating, but if it serves my identity as a smart person, then it becomes irresistible to develop a smart ass attitude anyway.

One of the benefits of being philosophically minded or intellectual is that it makes you more willing to question your beliefs or watch something like actualized because it is thus self validating. Even so intellectual integrity is hard because even for smart people it is irresistible to believe something self validating and it becomes hard to admit when you are wrong. If we take someone like Jordan Peterson for example, his beliefs about the left are irresistible to him because it is self validating to criticize the excesses of stage green. In a way it no longer makes sense to criticize someone for what they believe if these social and psychology factors are such that they must believe in a delusion.

A common dogma in science is rationality. It treats humans as if we are normally rational and delusional beliefs are consequence of bad epistemic integrity. In reality this is a very limited way and crude way to think about delusions. It blames the individual, almost on an implicit moral level, for the social factors which make delusions unavoidable. Humans are not rational because the primary function of all beliefs, even in those of science are social. You can look at how scientists quickly subscribe to some big name guy with authority. These beliefs are not rational, but science pretends to be rational because it is self validating to convince ourselves of our intelligence while distinguishing ourselves from delusional religious people. The rest of the scientific beliefs are a consequence of who you think you are no matter what formula is created because this formalization is acceptable within your social group, hence you created it.

The function of belief is to distinguish self from other. While your beliefs tell you who you are, they also tell you who you are not. For example, the debunking of the bible is a survival strategy for an atheist to say "I am not like these crazy delusional religious people." Politics is a good example. The reason so many people vote based on identity rather than policy is because your beliefs tell you who you are not. If you focus on all the lies spread by republicans about the 2020 elections, then it tells you "I am not like them." Without belief, there would be no way to distinguish self from other.

Ultimately, without belief you have no identity. The truth also has no identity. The truth becomes nothing, but indistinguishable from everything. When you demonize other people to distinguish yourself from them, this act is fundamentally misaligned with truth because you are demonizing yourself. In this way all criticism is untenable.

When all belief tells be who I am, I ask myself who am I really. I am simply left with "I am."

 Here is an interesting site about this paradigm shift happening in science right now. It is mostly profound, but it labels the belief that you are God as a delusion. The dogma that I am not God still persists in modern science, but it will change as society changes to by becoming more interested in awakening, and therefore in exploring altered states of consciousness.

https://psyche.co/ideas/beliefs-have-a-social-purpose-does-this-explain-delusions

In my case my methods were with a notebook without any psychedelics. For a long time I kind of sucked at contemplation and I needed to fill up a couple of notebooks before I got better at it. I was stuck in contemplation for a long time because I knew I held false beliefs, but I didn't know how to uncover them. I tried asking myself "what false beliefs do I hold" but nothing came to mind because whatever beliefs I hold, I hold as true. I then started writing about any belief that came to mind like "the bible was written by humans." Ultimately, I wasn't there to witness the writing of the original bible. Maybe there is a divine being out there somewhere who rights holy scriptures, but I don't know which scripture it is.

A lot of my beliefs were quickly replaced with "I don't know" and this is what triggered all of these mind blowing epiphanies. I could almost feel a sense of heat from the internally clinging to my self validating beliefs which is pretty much all of them. This is why I can now go meta on the fact that I accept or reject any belief. This act of accepting or rejecting beliefs is tied to my identity, and thus in of itself misaligned with truth in that this identity or pretense is fundamentally false. It does not matter what the content of your beliefs are because the act of believing or disbelieving is the function of a false identity which distinguishes itself from the rest of reality.

This is very life transforming stuff, and there is more to come but I don't know what. I hope you enjoyed reading this. I enjoyed discovering all of this. I have been laughing a lot and very energetic. I tried to explain it, but this forum might have an easier time understanding this.

[Guru Fat Bastard]

This is what it's all about. Stripping away the false to reveal the true.

There's no chance of ever coming  to know anything If you believe you already know. To realize, "I don't know" , is not only crucial, but necessary.
 

2 hours ago, trenton said:

Ultimately, without belief you have no identity.

Yep. The belief that you are a some-thing, or a ,some-body  is the root cause of "separation".

"Being in the world, but not of it"  means,
To act out your somebodiness , while at the same time, being fully aware of your nobodiness,


Excellent post@trenton . ?








 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Guru Fat Bastard