What I believe about why I believe.
The capacity to sustain unsubstantiated hope is how we overcome our capacity to perceive futility.
I believe in evolution. I believe that the more cleverly organisms are designed to survive and reproduce, the more their genetic strain will dominate. I believe that this has been the case for a very long time. I believe that there have been surges, lulls and crashes as evolutionary developments get out of synch and balance is lost.
I believe that intelligence is a survival advantage. I believe that a ceiling to that advantage comes when a life-form's ability to analyse it's circumstances collides with it's capacity for despair. When a life form without the ability to sustain unsubstantiated hope realises that it is in hopeless circumstances, it cannot see a point in striving or suffering further, so gives up. I believe that people will tend to be outraged by and reject this idea, because we have evolved to believe that life is not futile. I believe that belief in a higher purpose is the antidote to despair.
I believe that humans have developed a unique work-around for the reality we live in. It offers no tangible higher meaning. It offers no proof of the divine. No firm evidence of an afterlife or spiritual realm. Again, people will object and reject what I believe to be true on this front, because we have evolved to believe that there is more. Individuals are not born with spiritual beliefs, but with a need for them.
People develop and cultivate their personal faith as a defence against the randomness of the world, and the futility of existence. Families spread successful belief structures generationally. Religious groups tweak and refine and consolidate it. Cultures categorise and define it.
Belief systems, like organisms, evolve. They survive on their merits on a number of fronts. Believeability. Non-disprovability. Promotion of social cohesion. Justification of xenophobia. Auto-propogation. Stability balanced with flexibility. It's a balancing act like other evolutionary frameworks.
Religion, politics, hedonism, wealth, power, popularity, art, charity, beauty, music, fitness, fashion, sport, knowledge - any field about which people can muster an evangelical zeal can serve as a hook from which to hang higher meaning. It's not that that is a bad thing - it in many cases a very good thing from an individual or wider humanitarian standpoint. Problems really only arise when fanatacism kicks in. And fanatacism and disfunctional levels of delusion are extreme manifestations of the need to believe.
Our focus on our chosen belief has us striving for specific objectives and following established protocols - all useful in achieving goals. On the other hand, our focus can be a huge "Look Elvis!" distracting us from issues that our time and resources might be better spent dealing with, from a practical perspective.
Our capacity for unsubstantiated hope is useful, but hazardous. It has allowed us to rise up into a higher form of intelligence and to build what we know as civilisation. It is also allowing us to war with each other on a mind-blowing scale, and to cause increasing environmental harm. Even if our attention is drawn to larger issues, factionalism between belief systems turns our focus from the problems to self-defeating in-fighting over whose version of a belief is right.
I have gone so far as to wonder whether our capacity unsubstantiated hope is best used as a stop-gap measure to sustain us from the point where we hit the intelligence ceiling and where we can see ourselves well enough to identify and correct the insanity. Would we want to remove such an essential part of our human-ness? Would we sacrifice it for the sake of pure rationality? If we did would we still be strictly human?
I believe in evolution. I believe that the more cleverly organisms are designed to survive and reproduce, the more their genetic strain will dominate. I believe that this has been the case for a very long time. I believe that there have been surges, lulls and crashes as evolutionary developments get out of synch and balance is lost.
I believe that intelligence is a survival advantage. I believe that a ceiling to that advantage comes when a life-form's ability to analyse it's circumstances collides with it's capacity for despair. When a life form without the ability to sustain unsubstantiated hope realises that it is in hopeless circumstances, it cannot see a point in striving or suffering further, so gives up. I believe that people will tend to be outraged by and reject this idea, because we have evolved to believe that life is not futile. I believe that belief in a higher purpose is the antidote to despair.
I believe that humans have developed a unique work-around for the reality we live in. It offers no tangible higher meaning. It offers no proof of the divine. No firm evidence of an afterlife or spiritual realm. Again, people will object and reject what I believe to be true on this front, because we have evolved to believe that there is more. Individuals are not born with spiritual beliefs, but with a need for them.
People develop and cultivate their personal faith as a defence against the randomness of the world, and the futility of existence. Families spread successful belief structures generationally. Religious groups tweak and refine and consolidate it. Cultures categorise and define it.
Belief systems, like organisms, evolve. They survive on their merits on a number of fronts. Believeability. Non-disprovability. Promotion of social cohesion. Justification of xenophobia. Auto-propogation. Stability balanced with flexibility. It's a balancing act like other evolutionary frameworks.
Religion, politics, hedonism, wealth, power, popularity, art, charity, beauty, music, fitness, fashion, sport, knowledge - any field about which people can muster an evangelical zeal can serve as a hook from which to hang higher meaning. It's not that that is a bad thing - it in many cases a very good thing from an individual or wider humanitarian standpoint. Problems really only arise when fanatacism kicks in. And fanatacism and disfunctional levels of delusion are extreme manifestations of the need to believe.
Our focus on our chosen belief has us striving for specific objectives and following established protocols - all useful in achieving goals. On the other hand, our focus can be a huge "Look Elvis!" distracting us from issues that our time and resources might be better spent dealing with, from a practical perspective.
Our capacity for unsubstantiated hope is useful, but hazardous. It has allowed us to rise up into a higher form of intelligence and to build what we know as civilisation. It is also allowing us to war with each other on a mind-blowing scale, and to cause increasing environmental harm. Even if our attention is drawn to larger issues, factionalism between belief systems turns our focus from the problems to self-defeating in-fighting over whose version of a belief is right.
I have gone so far as to wonder whether our capacity unsubstantiated hope is best used as a stop-gap measure to sustain us from the point where we hit the intelligence ceiling and where we can see ourselves well enough to identify and correct the insanity. Would we want to remove such an essential part of our human-ness? Would we sacrifice it for the sake of pure rationality? If we did would we still be strictly human?
posted by Jac | 11:46 am
6 Comments:
Beautiful thought. In my case, I just don't know what to believe, but I keep on looking for the higher purpose in my life, and this is what keeps me going, at least for the time being.
I actually use the following thought experiment to try to substantiate my unsubstantiated hope:
(This may be hard to explain, and may not resonate with anyone else, but I'll do my best)
I think there are two primary hypotheses about the nature of the universe:
A: The universe is totally mechanistic; consciousness is a construct of evolution and other mechanistic forces, and basically is just a complex chaotic form of stimulus:response. It could be simulated by a sufficiently complex computer program, even if that program had totally predictable behaviour (i.e. no random numbers; just rules like Chess or Life)
--or--
B: The universe has some supernatural element which transcends the obvious mechanistic rules; consciousness is one example of this, that sufficiently complex organisms can transcend their mechanistic behaviour and develop some sort of "being" that has some sort of identity apart from just a collection of chemicals.
If (A) is true, then my personal consciousness is an illusion; in which case, "I" as a person really doesn't exist, I am just a complex set of reactions to external forces, and *there is no reason for me to feel unhappy at this as I don't really exist in the first case*.
If (B) is true, then my conscious self is (probably) not an illusion, it presumably has some connection to whatever supernatural side there is to the universe - and as such, my life or death is not without meaning, nor without hope.
So as long as I believe that I *exist*, as a conscious real *person* with some actual identity, then I see that as evidence that (B) is true, and the universe is not mechanistic and meaningless.
And if (A) is true, then there is nothing wrong with this particular bundle of chemicals believing in (B) is there? It's just a response to the stimuli around me, so there can be no moral value attached to such a belief. :)
Hmm - that's still tangled, but better than last time I tried to explain it...
So, K, I'm baffled that though you seem to have a clear idea of the differential options to explain our consciousness, and have resolved them into irrellevence to an extent,
you still seem to hold that the element of the sacred, the 'soul' is crucial to our worth. Or am I reading you wrong?
rhamnus, higher meaning is indeed a puzzle. Do we exist for it, or do we invent it to exist? And in the end, does it matter to the individual, as long as we have something to strive for?
I'm not sure I understand your comment on my comment :)
I'm not sure I like the term "soul" as it brings along a whole pile of not-necessarily-relevant baggage from a whole range of religions and other belief systems.
But yes, I tend to feel that an element of the super-natural (another misused term) is necessary for my self worth - your mileage may obviously differ! However, I find it very hard to feel that I have meaning if scenario (A) were to be true - I can't see what "I" means in that scenario, or how I would differ from one of my Sims...
Sorry I did not make myself clearer, K, but you have essentially answered what I was trying to ask: You believe that it ultimately *does* makes a difference whether we are a product of scenario 'a' and scenario 'b', whether or not we can ever know that while we live, whether or not it makes a difference to the way we behave.
I find your stance acutely interesting, and I respect it as well thought out, even if I don't quite 'get it'.
I have worked my way around to deciding that we are equally as worthy, and every bit as real as what we feel - whether we posess a spark of the divine (to abuse more baggage-laden language) or whether we are no more than the sum of our parts.
If a Sims character were, like you, complex enough to genuinely and spontaneously ponder whether they have a 'soul'/higher meaning/metaphysical essence, I'd have to extend them the benefit of the doubt that they have, to the extent that anyone does.
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