We shall find, after earnest observation and reflection, that all, except those who have entered into the way of wisdom, believe that happiness is only to be obtained by the gratification of desire. It is this belief, rooted in the soil of ignorance and continually watered by selfish cravings, that is the cause of all the misery in the world.
All times are mad, but some are madder than others. The grueling work of people of conscience is to portray through their words and actions a less mad reality—to show the route toward a better land that, admittedly, cannot be reached but that can be approached if enough of the oarsmen can be encouraged to pull in the same direction.
I did not expect to live in a peculiarly mad era, or to be caught up myself in the maelstrom. On the contrary, the lot of my generation seemed likely to be one of ironic detachment, banality, and order, the passions euthanized for the good of the species. But here we are. And here I am, working to crawl out of the clutches of the sea and up to the prow, hoping to become one of those pointing out the course, away from this and toward something else.
-Ryan Avent, In Good Faith: How the Nature of Belief Shapes the Fate of Societies
Most beliefs are soft until challenged. When you tell someone they’re wrong, the belief hardens.
Instead of trying to convince someone they’re wrong, assume they know something you don’t and figure out what it is.
I’ve found that saying, “Seems like you have a reason for saying that …” helps them explain instead of defend. Half the time, they’ll find gaps in their own reasoning before you have time to point them out. The other half, you’ll learn something and change your own mind.
-Shane Parrish, from this edition
Reality is what is happening right now. It is the objective circumstance that is occurring without any meaning or judgment attached to it. And so what we experience is not reality itself but our perception of reality. Any meaning or thinking we give something is self-created and our choice. . . . the meaning we give something is the filter through which we see life.
-Joseph Nguyen, Don't Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is the Beginning & End of Suffering
They had cliche answers but only to their self-created straw-men. To exaggerate only slightly, they had never talked to anyone who really believed, and had thought deeply about, views drastically different from their own. As a result, when they heard real arguments instead of caricatures, they had no answers, only amazement that such views could be expressed by someone who had the external characteristics of being a member of the intellectual community, and that such views could be defended with apparent cogency. Never have I been more impressed with the advice I once received: "You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do."
-Milton Friedman, as cut-and-pasted from here
Psychologists have uncovered a number of mental shortcuts we employ in making our everyday judgments. Termed judgmental heuristics, these shortcuts operate in much the same fashion as the expensive=good rule, allowing for simplified thinking that works well most of the time but leaves us open to occasional, costly mistakes. Especially relevant to this book are those heuristics that tell us when to believe or do what we are asked. Consider, for example, the shortcut rule that goes, "If an expert says so, it must be true."
-Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the skepticism of our time does not really destroy beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape.
-Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Collected Works, Volume 1
So much of what people call "conviction" is actually a willful disregard for facts that might change their minds. It's dangerous because conviction feels like a good attribute, while its opposite—being wishy-washy—makes you feel and sound like you don't know what's going on.
The strategy of having strong beliefs, weakly held, is often helpful.
Cultures are built around claims and beliefs about the otherworld: about God or gods, about correct worship, about the nature of reality, about goodness and truth and the meaning of virtue. These are also, inevitably, claims about what it means to be human. Knock out the spiritual core of any culture, and however hard people fight, its fate is sealed.
-Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine
.......................................Alan Watts:
. . . only doubtful truth needs defense.
. . . to know truth one must first get rid of knowledge . . .
Logic, intelligence, and reason are satisfied, but the heart goes hungry.
Man, as a being of sense, wants his life to make sense, and he has found it hard to believe that it does so unless there is more than what he sees—unless there is an eternal order and an eternal life behind the uncertain and momentary experience of life-and-death.
If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp . . .
For it is the essence of scientific honest that you do not pretend to know what you do not know, and of the essence of scientific method that you do not employ hypotheses which cannot be tested.
At once new myths come into being—political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world. These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness. Yet the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them—for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark.
Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go.
Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one's own. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it.
To "have" running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God.
I used to identify as libertarian, but then I would find myself defending positions I hadn't thought through because they're a part of the libertarian canon. If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious.
-Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
If all your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be highly suspicious.
-Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Never to examine, never to question: thus youth was taught at Cambridge. Many in the universities, wrote Bacon, "learn nothing there but to believe." From the sea of knowledge rose the classic Pillars of Hercules, boundary beyond which man durst not venture. To those with ambition to pass the Pillars—in Bacon's phrase to sail plus ultra—the University offered no compass.
-Catherine Drinker Bowen, Francis Bacon: The Temper of a Man
But we demand a belief when we want to escape from a fact into an unreality.
-J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
One of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line up on the opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education. Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again. It happens too often to be coincidence and it is too uncontrolled to be a plot. A closer look at the arguments on both sides often shows that they are reasoning from fundamentally different premises. These different premises—often implicit—are what provide the consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and groups on numerous, unrelated issues. They have different visions of how the world works.
-Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
When you stop believing in God, there is no sudden explosion of light or darkness. The world continues on its accustomed course. The sky does not fall. The sun still shines. Life goes on. But something is lost nonetheless, something important that gives life connectedness, depth and a sense of purpose; that gives you a feeling of participating in something vast and consequential.
-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning
Some make the world believe that they believe what they do not believe. Others, in greater number, make themselves believe it, being unable to penetrate what it means to believe.
-Michel de Montaigne, from An Apology to Raymond Sebond, also known as Chapter 12, Book 2 of his Complete Works
White privilege is the luxury belief that took me the longest to understand, because I grew up around a lot of poor white people. Affluent white college graduates seem to be the most enthusiastic about the idea of white privilege, yet they are the least likely to incur any costs for promoting that belief. Rather, they raise their social standing by talking about their privilege. When policies are implemented to combat white privilege, it won’t be Yale graduates who are harmed. Poor white people will bear the brunt.
-Rob Henderson, from here
Life is not a problem to be solved. It’s a paradox to experience. You can believe one thing and also believe its opposite.
-Derek Sivers, as culled from here
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