“A view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge”
and the part that says “not necessarily based on fact or knowledge” is important to take note of
because OPINIONS are often defended as if they were TRUTHS, FACTS, even based on EVIDENCE.
When in fact, they are largely shaped by our individual BELIEFS and VALUES.
Which in turn, are formed from ASSUMPTIONS, INFERENCES and the TESTIMONY of people we might respect or trust, such as authority figures, experts, work colleagues, family and friends.
They are a result of our SOCIAL and CULTURAL CONDITIONING.
When you react to someone criticising or challenging your OPINIONS, you can be sure you have invested part of your SENSE OF SELF in these OPINIONS.
That is, you are ATTACHED to them to such an extent that an attack on them is perceived as an attack on you. You and your opinions are as one.
The first step in breaking this identification is to observe it at work.
When your opinions are challenged, and you feel negative emotion as a result, look inside yourself to see what attachment you feel a need to defend.
Question why you feel you need to defend this OPINION and figure out what BELIEF it’s being driven by.
Then question the validity of this BELIEF. Why you have it, where it came from, is it a belief worth defending?
Unless you remove your sense of self from these BELIEFS, you will inject subjective bias into them, and will be unable to take an objective standpoint.
You will look to confirm them, to prove them, so that you can inflate your sense of self.
While, at the same time, discrediting your objectors, so as to avoid having to really look objectively at the underlying TRUTHS and FACTS, without the cloud of EMOTION getting in the way.
The SCIENTIFIC approach is to hold beliefs as hyphotheses and look to disprove them at any opportunity. If you can’t prove them as TRUTH or FACT, consider them best guesses.
I recently commented on a post, that talked about how even people who believe themselves to be ENTITLED are often attached to beliefs, because they have invested a sense of themselves in these beliefs, and when challenged can become aggressive, and closed off to competing narratives, because defeat would somehow make them feel their sense of self to be less.
This is important because this mental positioning is what leads mankind into conflict and ultimately war. Now I’m not saying we are all capable of killing others to defend our beliefs, but given the right circumstance it is possible that even so called level headed, model citizens are capable of contributing to unimaginable things. Mankind’s history is littered with examples. World War 2 for instance, is often blamed on the Nazi party under Hitler, but we have to remember that German people voted him into power, because they believed his rhetoric, and the narrative that Jewish people where the problem.
The following conversation ensued, I thought I would make a post about it, because this is a good illustration of what happens when you attach to beliefs, now there’s no chance of this escalating into war or anything so extreme, but it hopeful shows how division starts, because one person feels threatened by the ideas of another, because they are invested in their beliefs..
Me: A belief in anything risks investing yourself in it. As soon as anyone feels the need to defend their belief they have probably gone too far.
Other: But what good is a belief if you are unwilling to defend it? I don’t ask anyone to become a Buddhist or think the same, but if they challenge my core beliefs, such as work telling me to take a sentient life, I will defend my beliefs to the end.
Me: and there lays the Ego dilemma. It is for the individual to pick their own path, but as long as you choose to defend your beliefs you automatically invest yourself in them. This is Ego at work. Beliefs forge separation (from contradictory beliefs) and form attachment (to the belief), both are designed by the Ego to make yourself more, because the more you have the more you are. Why would a person need to be more, if you were truly enlightened? I’m open to contradictory views, I don’t invest myself in this way of thinking, it’s just the best explanation available to me at this moment.
Other: this is not allowing another to breach my beliefs. It has nothing to do with ego. There is nothing wrong with belief and faith. It is what makes us spiritual and follow an ethical path. Without belief we are nihilists.
Me: I’m just saying we should be open to the possibility we might be wrong. Seeking the truth, rather than settling for something that could be wrong, and closing ourselves off from the truth.
Other: why do you assume that I have not investigated multiple beliefs and religions? I do not create my beliefs out of just accepting what my parents told me. If I did, I would be a Christian. I take refuge in the three jewels because of my investigation into truth and logic. Yes I am invested in my beliefs.
Me: I’m not assuming anything, I’m not judging you in anyway. You commented on my comment. I hope what you believe serves you, but that alone doesn’t make it THE TRUTH, but it is your best guess, as is my view for me.
Me: Many beliefs are built on assumptions, inferences and the testimony of others, rather than FACT. What actual facts back up your beliefs? (that is a rhetorical question, I don’t expect you to list them) but ask yourself this question for every belief you hold. We all should do this. Many of the BIG questions we have about life, can’t be proven as fact, there is often a lot of faith involved, so they are effectively guesses, we hold to be the truth.
Now I wasn’t trying to be a smart ass in this conversation, or attack the other persons beliefs, but he or she seemed to take it that way to some degree and the impression I got (which is often difficult to accurately gauge via a text only medium) is that they were agitated by my comments just a little bit, and as a result felt a need to defend their position. The comment about Christians just believing what their parents told them, could be construed as a dig at a different belief system, but generally I think we both approached this conversation with a balanced view.
I dare say if I’d have framed my language more aggressively, and the other person, likewise, this could have got into something of a slanging match, like we see all too regularly on social media.
My comments during the short conversation weren’t a criticism of the other person but a general statement that all of us should be very wary that our beliefs don’t close us off to competing ideas. It’s like a barrier goes up and perceptions are closed down. I liken it to a child covering their ears and humming to prevent hearing what is being said.
Hey, I’m as guilty as anyone else, for defending my beliefs in the past. I now have a different view of them, or I could even say I have a different belief about beliefs. You can’t get away from holding beliefs, they’re kind of an anchor for us to build from.
The problem seems to come from investing yourself in them, as I said in the conversation above. But it is important to realise we often take what we need from our beliefs and ignore the rest. However this isn’t the best approach for uncovering THE TRUTH. Scientist generate an hypothese, and look to disprove it. The scientific approach prevents confirmation bias, and investment in the belief. It’s a best guess, until proven otherwise approach.
I have become very wary of anyone who says they have strong beliefs, that they would defend with their very lives, because I believe them.
I Grew up thinking strong beliefs and convictions were a sign of strength, but having become more spiritual over recent years I’m more aligned to the school of thought that thinks belief systems are more of a hindrance than a help.
We shape our sense-of-self through our beliefs. They become part of us and how we see ourselves in the world.
We have a tendency to look for confirmation of our own beliefs and any opinions that flow from them. Confirmation is designed to uphold our sense-of-self. We may even go as far as to defend our beliefs with our very own live’s. How many have died to defend their belief systems, history is littered with examples.
Surely we would be better advised to do as science does, and formulate a hypothesis which we then try to disprove. This approach frees us from beliefs supported by nothing more than assumptions and inferences and ensures we only believe things backed by actual evidence and facts.
What beliefs do you hold with any kind of conviction, and what evidence supports them? Is it a belief built from the testimony of experts? If so, what evidence supports what the expert is telling you, and has this evidence been interpreted without personal bias and preference by the expert that promotes it? You may find much of what you believe or have heard from others to be made up of a great deal of inference and assumption, on your part and theirs.
So what can you believe? Even personal past experiences can be unreliable. For instance memories can be mistaken, if you could meet yourself at different ages memories would likely to be different in each of yourselves at different ages.
When we experience an event we use all our senses woven together with our internal model of the world to make up that experience and as the memory gets older it becomes less vivid, and subsequent events can supersede it and affect how we feel about it.
It’s even possible to implant completely false memories, if plausible enough. In a past experiment, a participant was told they had been lost in a mall as a child, and after the passing of some time, more and more detail began to creep into the false memory. The participant embellished the false memory, because as humans we are very imaginative storytellers, and we are all capable of doing this.
Our memory of the past is not a faithful record, it’s a reconstruction, a mythology. Our memories are not particularly reliable because they don’t just record what happens, they allows us to simulate what is coming next. It is a narrative that links the past with the future, so that we can work out what we need to do tomorrow.
Also past experience doesn’t necessarily predict the future. People’s behaviour is greatly influenced by their environment and circumstances far more than we give credit for, and we’re not always privy to the underlying context of other people’s behaviour, we may just be witness to the resulting actions. We then build a narrative around this behaviour which says more about what’s going on inside us, rather than anything else. We kind of project our thoughts on to what others are doing and believe this to be the other person’s truth.
So maybe we should all be more skeptical about our own beliefs and opinions, and those of other people as well, I’ve learned to do what the wise man does and question everything, and believe nothing at face value because this actually leaves us more open to alternative ideas, methods of thinking and doing as well as different approaches to living life. We also become more tolerant and empathetic as a result.
You might think the opposite would be true, that skepticism closes you off to new ideas, when in fact holding rigid beliefs does that far more effectively. When you have a fixed mental position, you will reject anything that counters that position, because your sense-of-self depends on it.
Don’t invest anything of yourself into ideas, beliefs and opinions, stay clear of convictions and be open to provable evidence and facts, and even then be wary of any possible misinterpretation of these.
Remember what the famous quote says; “The more I know the more I realise how little I actually know.”
