© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 113
Somewhere in South America, there is a tribe that believes that treachery and deceit are exceptional attributes. The Christian missionaries didn’t have much luck with them: after all those years of preaching, the tribe founded a religion based on Judas Iscariot. At the other end of the scale, there is a tribe in Africa that has no concept of anger, other than the term ‘abberant madness’. And between these two extremes there are you and I, and the rest of the human race.
What do you believe? Is it something with which you grew up? Is it something fresher? This is not a trick question. There are no right or wrong answers in this column.
As far as I can make out, it is right to believe in something from a range of beliefs that are current around the time of the belief. To illustrate the point, I have a selection of current religious practices from which I can select.
For instance, I can believe in Christ as a liberator in the political sense, or Christ as a loving being, as witnessed in churches today. That would be quite acceptable to a large group of people.
Slightly older beliefs would still be marginally acceptable. For instance, if I believed in Christ the blue-eyed, blond-haired Commie-smiter, so popular in the Fifties and Sixties, I would probably still find a small but significant number of people with whom to share my beliefs.
The really older beliefs are completely out of the question though. It would definitely be wrong of me to believe in Christ as the remote, authoritarian, intolerant being in whom humanity believed during the dark ages, and subsequently to advocate burning at the stake for new age religious practitioners.
As far as the future goes, apparently it might be possible for me to believe in Christ the wise and loving human, who was in some respects a family man, as proposed by a number of biblical researchers, academic and otherwise. And no, I am not referring to Dan Brown or Michael Baigent. I might even choose to believe it now, but I would be unwise to be too vocal about it, until the church gives its assent.
It is also quite likely that there will be some expectation from the religious right that I believe in Christ the opponent of Islam.
Belief is pretty much like the meat shelf at the supermarket. Make sure you check the ‘sell-by’ date, and avoid the spicy, new-fangled fusion stuff if you want people to attend your dinner parties or barbecues. You have Halaal and Kosher as choices in separate fridges, or you can skip the meat entirely and go vegetarian. Other than that, it is up to you to decide what you buy.
One of the interesting phenomena, not normally considered with any depth in the study of history, is the manner in which beliefs change. It feels as if we change beliefs the way we change wardrobes.
We start out with a wardrobe in which there is a selection of clothes, and as the clothes grow older, appear less fashionable and become more threadbare, we discard them, and head to the shops in search of something newer, and more in keeping with what is worn by the people around us.
In other words, our beliefs are determined by functionality and popular fashion. And personal beliefs entail going out on a dangerous limb.
To understand what will happen tomorrow, it should be possible to look at what is happening today, consider similar situations from the past, and then alter current beliefs to try and achieve a more desirable outcome.
But perhaps this is already a common occurrence. Conflict and the creation of perceptual threats are standard forms of political crowd control. The lesson is that reality can be altered by altering beliefs.
So the questions become, how to do this ethically and what should be permitted? Or should humanity just let things slide and see what comes up in the mix, accepting the good with the bad?
Perhaps there is something to be said for not delving too deep into the lessons of history, and applying them. But it is tempting to believe that humanity can create a better future.
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