Dealing with fixation of belief
“In his well-known paper “The fixation of belief” (1877), Charles Sanders Peirce describes four methods for belief fixation: the method of tenacity, the method of authority, the a priori method, and the scientific method”
— opening paragraph of a formal discussion of how to accomplish De-fixation of Belief.
This is one of those rare academic papers that is both good on professionalism and good on making the story fun to read. More on that paper after my comments on the Medium article, Scientists: Climate Change Is The Least Of Our Worries, the article that reminded me or Charles Sanders Peirce. In Clem Samson’s story, there is a discussion an unspecified number of beliefs that are currently causing a lot of social and cultural difficulty. I define social as what you encounter in the reality of your daily life: household, work place, play places, cyber spaces, as well as other spaces. Social is now; culture is the past, present, and future shifting back and forth as dreams. Most often, these days, as viral videos of particular musical groups. Dreams which express (sometimes compel) underlying assumptions that define the current societal scene your life path goes through. The dreams in words, images, and especially by living entertainers. For example, Elvis Presley was hugely influential in transforming Southeast Asian cultures, though in sometimes very different ways than found in the (almost) United States.
Clem’s approach is to go straight to the places where we discover that our dreams don’t match our realities. (Of course they don’t; but for brief periods of time for certain groups of people, their societal reality does match their dreams. This can be very good, or very bad.)
In Clem Samson’s piece, he shines the light of today’s cultural realities on a great many interesting turns of phrase such as “…get out of bed and go to work because of that fairy tale about discipline and achievement.” This is one of our cross cultural beliefs that motivates a great many good people to keep doing their part in society. This is how the trash gets picked up and the power lines fixed. But, of course, most of us have gone through periods where “going to work?” No, thankyou, not today.
Today I’ll be doing a part of my life path that deals with the spectrum of beliefs surrounding the concepts of warrior and healer.
“I feel the same way about the human race. Peace is not an option because of the biological makeup of homo sapiens. We are a violent predator, not a peace-loving hippy.”
Science is certainly on the side of homo sapiens as a predator, but the biological impact today is usually hidden behind the various methods we use to make a warrior mindset beneficial to societies. Such as transforming the skills and training to make Wall Street Warriors, staunch warriors in the service of the dream that profits are always first.
Common sense and an honest look at reality is on the side of the Healer. The world is not a very big place. The news, the real news where facts are more important than opinions, mostly.
Most warriors are men and most healers are women; but this is only a reflection of a biological reality that is mostly true. Every person, man or woman, has dreams directly related to whatever biological gender they are. However, if the sex element is not explicitly part of the dream, then dreams can be gender neutral. What’s important is the assumptions explicitly or implicitly manifested in songs, stories and viral videos.
Coming down on the loving peace side is almost always part of the picture. Instead of “kill the enemy” type training, we can usually make our contribution to society based on some transformation of our war-like ancestors who enjoyed the mortal combat between skilled opponents, we’ve got the business world. Which all too often uses what amounts to killing the enemy — bankruptcy or some other financial “death” blow.
The problem is not which side of a belief in the war-like vs cooperative spectrum we fall on as it is being able to recognize that this is not really a scientific question. It is a cultural belief system question that needs a dream level answer: How well do the dreams resemble reality for most people? But also, are these good dreams or nightmares? Teaching dreams or idle fantasies?
Warrior side answers have indeed worked well; but then history is mostly written by the winning side’s cultural dreams involving channeling warrior energy into making money, for example. Or evangelical dreams of imposing their fundamental belief system role on a culture.
In the world of finance, for example, a currently frequent fundamental belief is that making money is the most important thing in the business world. Merging that belief with warrior cultural assumptions can and has led to a great many of our luxuries such as this 27 inch screen I’m typing on with a wealth of tools only a click away.
I’m very much interested in how the “we are by nature peaceful” works with the profits first cultural assumption. Not very well, I suspect. Where before we have “warrior duels,” now we will need the basic interaction to be fair trade, not cut-throat competition. Nonetheless, we will always need persons of both warrior and healer dreams; or some viable balance between Warrior attitudes and Healer attitudes.
I am glad there is a good mix of professional medical warriors and professional medical healers taking care of me during my real world encounter with cancer. The VA may have issues, but profits first and acceptable levels of greed are not a significant part of those issues; thus freeing the medical professionals to focus on providing quality health care, instead of “profits first” and loopholes.
As a general rule I propose that the goal of a society is to match cultural dreams with reality. In other words, when the community coalesces with resonating cultural dreams and assumptions, then there is reason to hope the myths and fairy tales taken to heart in childhood have a good chance of matching reality.
“Every day my brain presents me with all kinds of myths and fairy tales that it is sure that I need to take very seriously.”
I would add to Clem’s thoughts the recognition that the myths and fairy tales that govern our own behaviors are sometimes so deeply embedded that we aren’t even conscious of them. And that every once in a while we find ourselves walking a dream path in reality.
One of the key elements in the cultural assumptions conflict going on now is centered on how to conduct business. At one end of the business game spectrum is the idea that social (can be seen as monetary) transactions are a zero sum game with a specified winner, the best warrior. At the other end is the notion that conflicting cultural values can be negotiated well enough that everyone is a winner.
I want to bring back barter in a much more equitable fashion, where both parties are happy with the deal. This is in direct opposition to a zero sum game where there can be only one winner. Money, by itself, for example has only two states: have or have not. Bargaining for a (small) construction gig has a wealth of states that include a mechanism for agreeing that both sides got what they wanted at reasonably close to the “right price.” The Healer archetype whose goals include harmony and fair trade.
I am a bit distressed to learn that there are some biological factors which reinforce stubbornly held beliefs with dopamine. Perhaps in the implicit warrior challenge being present in the belief.
Now, if only that resultant energy could be channeled into art, for example, the warrior challenge might be successfully diverted or even eliminated. This requires training and experience in group dynamics. How good a manipulator are you?
