Let's Do This....

 First Day of Class - First Day of a New Career? Jesus, I really hope so...

Listening to: David J - "Not Long For This World"

My darker understanding of belief.

 I'm not exactly sure how or why, but for about two weeks I have been pondering belief. I'm writing about those things that we adopt as part of our catalog of facts that supplement our reality. Each person has their onw threshold of what constitutes fact for them, but shouldn't that threshold begin with a foundation of something uniform for everyone, and the layers built upon that foundation are the jumping off points between someone jumping ship and someone else saying, "this makes perfect sense". In my mind, if all humans go through this process of building a pyramid of belief, then we would all have the same base understanding of the world - and I think we all know, that simply isn't the case. I have no belief in that.

Perhaps religion was the first additive into the soup that resulted in some matters passing the taste test, and others being repulsed by the flavor. Maybe faith is the snake in the garden, taking what man and woman formulated as their reality; learning by touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and hearing their environment, but then saying to them, "these things are forbidden because...". Now, you can have faith in something, or a belief in something, and maybe here in 2021, people no longer know how to discern the two?

Here was my thought specifically as I traveled into the mountains, "How can tens of millions of Americans believe something to be so profoundly true based on no evidence of such; even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary; that they were willing to overthrow the American government, but something like say UFOs or Bigfoot that have thousands of pieces of anecdotal, photographic, video, and environmental evidence support the reality of their existence only maintain a scoffed at, ridiculed and censured audience?" If we all start at the same baseline, and formulate belief based on how many facts (or blocks) we put in our pyramid, shouldn't we all fall into some spectrum of truth when it comes to a contested matter?

Whether the foundation of your pyramid is Bigfoot or the 2020 Election... that is your baseline. Okay, start stacking blocks of facts, hell... stack your circumstantial stuff too. Let's agree that whatever goes in our pyramid needs to be substantiated by at least one provable fact about that item. 

Bigfoot: Ten of thousands of independent witness accounts over 8 decades.

2020 Election: Ballots numbering in the hundreds, maybe thousands were found all over the country and were not counted. They were for both primary candidates, but let's just say they were all for Trump.

Bigfoot: There is video, photographic, and environmental evidence that can't be proven to be real, but supports the facts, and cannot be collectively proven to be hoaxed.

2020 Election: Russia, Iran, China and others individually attempted to sway the election one way or the other.

Bigfoot: Law Enforcement, Scientists, Military and Forest Rangers have signed affidavits that the witnessed an unknown, upright, bi-pedal animal.

2020 Election: ... someone said something despite evidence to the contrary and reasons...

Okay, I'm not making a case for the existence of Bigfoot, I'm just saying, in the American Judicial system, if I had to bring these cases the a grand jury to determine if these should go to trial, I think Bigfoot may get a shot, as we already know, the 2020 Election, would not, did not, and should not. That does not however change the fact, the tens of millions of Americans believe the election was rigged based solely on who is saying it. That to me is bewildering and probably at the core as to why I can't find a way to understanding the other side. I want to, I need to, my parents are on that side. I need to know why their reality is so different from mine, and how facts are different between two people.

I think I realized it last night. Watching Ghost Nation of all things. It came to me. Our beliefs have more to do with our emotions that they have to do with facts. We've allowed want and faith to be as solid a foundation as reality. I want Bigfoot and UFOs to be real, mostly because so many intelligent people have laughed it off, said it is impractical and all fake; and my brain has always told me, "you weren't there, how can you dismiss this with no understanding of the experience?" For someone willing to overthrow our government, maybe having their anger, frustration, and repression vocalized developed into a belief that they were running the show from now on and for good and even if it meant breaking the rules, no one was going to take that away.

I have no other explanation. I and everyone else either has to accept that our realities are dictated by our beliefs, or we need a hard reset on truths. We've known for centuries that there were two sets of facts...religion and scientific. Are we now living with a third reality? Where each and every person get's to decide their own set of facts and how to write them, or is this simply an extension of religion, and the World has been swept up in a cult of personality driven by centuries of inequality?