Believing me believing you believing them

The advent of Science led many moderns to believe that, apart from their own, based on experimentation and reason, all human cultures had been based on beliefs, archaic systems of thought, superstitions and the like, where irrational and collective adherence to unverified principles could easily override discernment.

In reality, Human Sciences have gradually shown us that we modern people are not much more immune to the influence of belief. Quite simply because, when we are born, our system of thought can only be constructed from a ‘sample’ of other people's thought, starting with that of our parents, and in a language (a culture) that is already impregnated with a myriad of presuppositions: ‘this man is tall’ tells us nothing about the size of the man in question, but depending on whether we are in Asia or Europe, our idea of his size will vary.

The most tenacious and stupid beliefs are often so strongly imbued in popular culture that they are repeated and passed on without even questioning their rationality. ‘It's because he's cheap that he's so rich’. It doesn't matter if our rich cheapskate haggles over a few pennies one day and flies off to the Riviera the next for a $3,000-a-night stay. Not only is our man rich thanks to a few pennies generally taken from someone much poorer than he is, but he can afford to spend a few days yachting as long as he has made sure that the poor man stays poor. The rich man's belief is that not only is it normal for the poor to be poor and the rich to be rich, but he also shares another belief with the poor: if he is rich it is because of himself, and therefore if a poor person is poor it is because of themselves . In essence and according to this logic: if you're rich on purpose, you're poor on purpose. Or maybe is it Fate? Or God? My belief is that nobody really quite did it on purpose, but he I never insist on this fact because, strangely enough, it annoys everyone, rich and poor alike.

If we question our beliefs (is that blasphemy?) we can push back the limits in which they enclose us as far as we need to. It's all a question of desire, will and compassion. It's also a question of clairvoyance: since our imagination is always confronted with new limits, it's a game of trails to travel through the shadows of our unconscious and explode many of our old beliefs in order to install... new ones! It's worth it for much more than just ourselves, because that's how the world has always changed and moved forward.