Belief Systems and Change

Blog  #8

Language is the brick in the edifice of the dream we call civilization. Belief systems are the mortar. Language and the way it is used creates and sustains attitudes and mental constructs, but it is our belief systems that weave everything together. We seldom question belief systems (after all, they are “belief” systems) and we are deaf to anything that contradicts them.

We live in a created reality which has walls which hide anything outside itself. How else does one explain how people (slaveholders) lived quite happily and unquestioningly for thousands of years with slavery? How to explain that in many cultures including imperial Rome infanticide was a commonplace and accepted occurance? How one of the most civilized countries in recent times could condone the wholesale round-up and murder of millions of jews, gypsies and handicapped people without blinking an eye? We create hypnotic structures that we live within and they put us to collective sleep.

In western society we have a belief system that began 5000 years ago and still wields its vision over us today. That system was called the bible. God supposedly created us in his own image (rather than the more plausible reverse) and all creatures were conveniently given to us by him so we could have dominion over them. They existed to serve us, work for us and, most importantly, be our food. The one thing belief systems have in common is that they serve the holders of the belief system.

Some Native Americans had a belief system where they spoke to the Great Buffalo Spirit In The Sky and made offerings to this spirit. In exchange, the Great Buffalo Spirit sent buffalo for them to kill and eat. Then white men arrived with a belief system that made it ok to kill millions of buffalo to make hats, and destroy the natives’ chief source of food. Their belief systems also made it perfectly ok to kill “Indian savages” and take over their world.

Certain Inuit people will chew up snow and spit it into the mouth of a seal or walrus they have just killed because they believe the creature let itself be killed so it could get a drink of fresh water. Belief systems serve those who believe in them, that is their purpose. The belief in the divine right of kings served kings, as the “infallibility of the pope” served many popes. The belief in “The one true God” has helped Jews, Christians and Moslems kill each other and innumerable other peoples who believed differently, this had the added benefit of liberating land and properties that could then be taken over with a clear conscience.

Belief systems are usually so entrenched that they are taken for granted and almost never questioned. Anyone who does question them is immediately considered crazy, or an enemy. The Christians who did not accept the Roman Gods were fed to the lions, when these Christians in turn became dominant, dissenters were labeled “Heretics” or “Witches” and burnt at the stake.

Today the new “normal” largely goes unquestioned. When I was young we believed the United States was the “Good guy”, always helping the poor and downtrodden with our generous aid, and working for universal freedom and democracy. We Americans looked at protesters in South America and elsewhere as “ingrates” and “Communist agitators”. Our belief systems kept us ignorant and blind to our ruthless exploitation of other countries resources, our support of murderous dictators, and the true uses of our supposedly generous “aid”.

Today our belief system has it that it is quite ok to eat “meat”. We bring our kids to McDonalds by the millions, we sit down to our steak dinners without a second thought. We torment and murder (yes murder), billions of our fellow creatures every year without giving it a single thought. All this is considered perfectly normal and respectable. We do not ask our politicians what they ate for dinner any more than we asked politicians 300 years ago whether or not they owned slaves. 

We are on the brink of change. Beliefs are changing and we are beginning to wake up. We are beginning to see the truth behind our blinding belief systems. Norms will change.

When we fully emerge from our mass delusion we will look back at our current belief systems with disbelief.