"What would it be like really and absolutely to believe? To believe that God sends you to war, God bends the path of bullets, decides which of his children will die, or have their legs blown off, or make a few hundred million on Wall Street, depending on today's Grand Design?"
John Le Carre – Absolute Friends
How does it feel to really believe in something, that you throw away every other possibility, every other alternative? I don’t know because I have never been in that position. See, I don’t really believe in anything [check my post: On Being Skeptic]. But I do now the feeling of confronting those with a really strong believe of being right—while actually they’re dead wrong. How does it feel? Scary.
On the way to the office I have to pass this three-way intersection where we can go straight or take a right turn—-I have to take a right turn. But strangely enough there are only 2 types of red lights there: to stop the oncoming traffic from the right OR to stop the oncoming traffic from ahead and the right-turning traffic.
When the traffic from the right is halted, I’m in trouble. This is because I have to cross the path of the oncoming traffic since the traffic lights are green for both of us. Since the oncoming traffic is far busier, I have to struggle just to make the turn.
The problem is not everyone realizes that the right-turning traffic is also entitled to go at the same time. There are a lot of people from oncoming direction actually think that I am intentionally ignoring the red light and trying to get my way. True, in other situations when there’s no traffic light the turning traffic has to yield for the oncoming traffic. But here the window to make turn is so tight I have to force my way in. And this can get real nasty.
In one occasion I had a motorcycle driver ramming its front wheel to my car while shouting “wait for your turn you ****, can’t you see it’s red light now?”. In another occasion one car driver actually got down from his vehicle and punch my car really hard it’s dented. No need to describe the expletive here, you’ve got my point.
Basically they all think that I break the rule, that they’re so damn right, and there’s no possibility that they can be wrong. Since they can’t be wrong, they’re entitled to punish the wrong doer, which mean: everyone who’s not in the same boat with them. Such is the power of belief.
That’s why people with belief are scary. Sure, if the energy is directed towards something productive you can get positive results. That’s all those self-help seminars and books are all about. However, in the real world the energy resulting from belief is not always channeled to that direction. Consider my story above, that’s only a small example. How about ‘the fight for your religion’ or ‘the struggle against capitalist oppression’ or ‘the search for WMD’ or ‘the war against the axis of evil’… See the pattern there?
I can’t dismiss the POSSIBLE existence of the absolute truth. But to act on the base of absolute belief on anything, with no consideration that the others MIGHT be right as well is beyond my comprehension. That may be the root of all evil.
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