Belief and Behavior

It's all in how you see it.

Duck or Rabbit?

Most of us are lazy. We don’t do much unless either we calculate that we have to, or we’re moved by a cause, an ideal. Then we can work or protest or campaign or fight tirelessly and without remorse, almost no matter what we do. It can be a book, or a particularly charismatic human, an event or an idea, even one’s own idea: it strikes us, we are moved, and then sooner or later we go on the move. Our ardor for a cause can shrink from that initial moment or it can grow and grow.

What are some of the causes that motivate us? Economic, form-of-government, supernatural beings, protecting those dear to us, righting a wrong, anger, greed, pride, and just about anything under the sun…but there are a few that’ll reach a whole lot of people: it’s the first four:

financial well-being,

taking care of one’s own.

politics/patriotism,

gods and the various Gods

All this leads up to the truism: People will do just about anything for something they believe in. How wildly we will act is directly proportional to how fervently we believe. Looking at it from an overarchingly anti-war perspective, we may want to know which beliefs are “dangerous,” and which, if any, might promote peace. When it comes to politics or the gods, experience indicates that these promote and even necessitate the opposite of peace. They appear to be inherently “us vs. them.”

We don’t need to look far to find a way that working for your own financial advancement and taking care of those you care for are united. It’s called family. In the sixties people talked about the Family of Man (read Humankind), meaning we should all take care of each other. I am simple-minded enough to believe that if we placed our faith in each other, we would have a supreme ideal like a single God, but since our faith would be in each other, there could not be any rival faiths, the way there can be rival groups with their rival gods, or Gods. I’ve capitalized it to highlight the strange situation in which different very large groups of people believe they have identified and even talk to the one and only God…except that paradoxically there appear to be several such unique beings.

So, doing make-believe for a moment – society-fiction on analogy with the fantasied scientific developments in science-fiction – how would things change if we were trustworthy, and could rightly trust each other? People, leaders and followers, could give their word when there were disagreements or mutual interest in an unsharable thing, (e.g., what is the government of the Donbas region?), and come to some reasonable arrangement. One powerful motivation for doing so is that no contested prize is anywhere near as valuable as consistent, reliable peace. A very large “peace dividend” would be slow in coming, and less dramatic for that reason, but once national treasuries were devoted to taking care of their citizens rather than threatening others, many of the reasons to start and to fight in wars would greatly diminish.

This is just silly talk unless we deserve that faith, which could only be if we were all trustworthy. Religious beliefs help to create trustworthy people. From early on, children believe God is watching them, and they had better behave themselves. That includes not lying or deceiving, being kind to people and animals that need help, and doing what’s expected of you and doing what you said you would do. But the police rolls and the history of wars give testimony that religions have failed to make enough of us trustworthy. In fact religions are sometimes down there with the other causes of war. This may be partially because obedience and gratitude have higher priorities in many religions than trustworthiness and compassion.

The religion-like belief-systems without God or gods such as some versions of Buddhism can only have ‘religious wars” due to human passions such as revenge, outrage, pride or greed. Without a supernatural being there can be no directives from on high. Actually the term “religious war” sounds like a self-contradiction, like “married bachelor,” or “angles of a circle.” Any belief-system that foments war simply isn’t a religion, just as a medical method to heal a condition can’t start out with “Kill the patient.” But let’s face it, a belief system is a potent motivator, whatever it entails, and people will do what they believe they must.

This is where trust comes in. One thing about language – all language – is that it multiplies our opportunities for deceit. Dogs can game with you, apes can bluff, but who but we can guarantee and promise what cannot be, brag and mourn about what never has been, and look you fully in the face and lie? So language simultaneously gives us good reason to first mistrust, and secondly form ourselves into a fighting force, complete with weapons we manufacture, people we motivate, assemble and organize, and a hierarchy for deployment.

Paradoxically, letting down a fighting platoon’s trust is about as serious a crime as can be, but deceiving a foe is the very aim of most generals. It is a paradox because if the leaders could genuinely trust each other, there would be no violent conflict in the first place.

We must see ourselves beyond this natural enmity toward outsiders whereby we give ourselves permission, even encouragement to lie and mislead. On our ever-more-crowded planet there really are no absolute outsiders, and we can reduce the distances between us with the single act of truthfulness. Our interests are not the same and our means of pursuing them are varied. But we can tell the truth and do what we say. If we could rightfully believe that those putative enemies out there were telling the truth, we’d see the wisdom of coming to term without bloodshed, that solving the problem is more the issue than getting everything we want, our greatest public health issue – that has been stalking us for at least 400,000 years – would be over. We can suspect a hidden adversary everywhere we look, or we can find a sweet reasonableness in each of us. It’s all in how you see it.