On Believing and Either Deceiving Ourselves or Seeing Truth
This discussion was created from comments split from: Call for "Critique my Zettel"-Notes.
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@Sascha
OK - I'm sufficiently tempted to post one of my recent (and as @Will commented, undoctored) zettels. Here it is:
On Believing and Either Deceiving Ourselves or Seeing Truth
[[202202030813]]
02-03-2022 08:13 AM
tags: #Belief #Truth #Deceiving
Vic turns the common saying "If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it" on it's head, to indicate that sometimes we see what we are looking for, whether it is there or not.
In the bigger context, the statement presents a condundrum: are we talking about a form of self-deception or about a form of discovery? Clearly, it cannot be both, but in different circumstances, it could be one or the other. How are we to discern which it is and whether we should persist in "believing" or abandon the effort?
For example, we can all think of early scientific discoveries that were made because people persisted in believing a particular concept without concrete proof. Would Columbus have discovered the North American continent if he had been dissuaded by his sailors from the idea of a spherical earth? Contrarily, we can think of examples of where people believed things that are not true, to their detriment (such as ineffective or even harmful folk remedies for serious diseases).
The following quote, attributed to Einstein, elaborates on the "self-deception" half of the equation:
There are spiritual dimensions to the concept of belief as well, particularly as they apply to not deceiving ourselves, (some of which are addressed in the links shown below). Alma 32:26-43 is a masterful discussion of how belief can lead to faith, which eventually can lead to light/truth and to spiritual fruit. Alma provides a step-by-step procedure of how to discern between developing faith or just wasting our time, and the pitfalls that could be encountered along the way. Perhaps his process also could be applied to more temporal matters.
internal links:
[[202105192232]] On self-deception
[[202008221519]] Belief alone is an insufficient basis for establishing truth.
[[202006242037]] How one develops faith.
external links:
Article from Psychology Today on this idea: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/busting-myths-about-human-nature/201205/i-wouldn-t-have-seen-it-if-i-hadn-t-believed-it
Content
The central thought is already present but it could be peeled open more. It is a problem statement which can be formulated such:
My recommendation is to choose the later version since faith is existential and not factual. That means that truth cannot be treated as the abstract idol of the mind but should be always accompanied by heart and soul. Something that is true can still be incomplete and omit part of the bigger picture which can be a source of falsehood or even a lie.
You start with a pattern description of the quote. My recommendation is to start with the one-sentence-summary to give your future self your best level of understanding of the issue available to you. I'd pair it with the question.
Title
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Summary
The general issue with this note I see is that it needs to be developed but leave room to the open nature of the content. If you follow my advice of making this a structure note with the question as the central thought you can use this note as a general starting point and fertile soil to plant thought seeds that belong in this garden (fenced by the boundaries of the question). This would be a good compromise to both be more precise but give your thought room to breath.
My recommendations for further research:
Comment to my comment: The topic of the note is exactly my beat. So, it was hard for me to not be too focused on the content. But since note was decent overall and I guess that this note is part of your inner work I tried to bake in some open loops to discover. Since the note is about faith I tried to be a tat more polite than I am inclined.
If this is compatible with your faith, of course. ↩︎
I am a Zettler
@Sascha Thank you for your thorough critique of my zettel "On Believing and Either Deceiving Ourselves or Seeing Truth". I have read through it; now I need to re-read and think about it. I'll likely post some comments or questions after that, but wanted to send an initial thanks for the time you spent on this.
Did you edit the note?
I am a Zettler