Comments on: Building a belief system – Why do we believe what we believe?

By: senthil

senthil — Sun, 04 May 2008 17:11:54 +0000

Generally, i feel, there is difference b/w realisation and belief.. truth can be realised.. while persons can only be believed.. relationship can be realised… relations can only be believed..

/** Even thiruvalluvar has said “epporul yaar yaar vaai ketpinum apporul mey porul kaanbadhu arivu”. **/

In the above thirukkural, the word “meiporul” means realisation…

So, in my opinion, it would not be appropriate to believe on truth..

No body says “Unmaiyai Nambu” .. rather we say “Unmaiyai unarthal”

Now, does realisation leads to belief? I would say “NO” .. because, realisation is dynamic, whereas belief is somewhat rigid..

(Sorry, if i did not make any sense here )

By: senthil

senthil — Sun, 04 May 2008 17:05:24 +0000

Sridhar,

I would like to add another point in addition to yours.. Priority of opinions/interests..

Particularly, if we have pool of positive and negative news about a particular thing, how do we arrive at a belief? Here, the priority of pre-formed opinions, and interests..

Suppose, a friend doesnt help us in time for the first time.. we dont lose trust/belief in him, because, we had already a good opinion, which takes priority..

When he again does it for the second time, we are slowly forming another alternate opinion, but we still give priority to the former one.

If it takes for the third time, the priority becomes either or, and temporarily suspended.

If it happens for the fourth time, now the priority of the later negative opinion takes forward, and our belief system gets altered..

Now, if we have multitude of such opinions, we strive to choose which one is best to our interest.

For example, in the same friendship, if we get benefitted in other ways, or if we have an opinion that our friend wil be of value to us in other ways, our belief in him do not change that much easily..

By: senthil

senthil — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:55:50 +0000

Sukumar,

I would like to add my points on getting cold on eating icecream or cold water.. The enzymes are sensitive to temperature. Normally many of the enzymes doesnt react in lower temperatures. This may be one of the reason, why the viruses are not killed if we drink cold water.

By: Sukumar

Sukumar — Sat, 03 May 2008 06:17:08 +0000

Thanks Saraswathi. You are right, all of us go through the phase where our near-and-dear, especially the elderly ones, influence our belief system disproportionately. That is a great insight. And i think it maybe due to our culture of unquestioning obedience? Whenever you ask a question, you are discouraged – this is what our ancestors did and hence there must be some meaning to it, don’t question it – this is the approach taken in general. I was also in a similar situation and once i started working with economic independence came my ability to start thinking about and questioning things more freely.

Yes, Sreedhar’s comment is very insightful.

By: Saraswathi

Saraswathi — Sat, 03 May 2008 03:03:20 +0000

Sukumar,
I re-read your post now.

/*What are your experiences with your belief system, what is hard to do for you?*/

Well to begin with I was always influenced by my parent’s beliefs especially my dad. I never questioned his beliefs and whatever he said was “ultimate truth”(this was in school days). Later slowly I started interacting with a wider group of people and they shared beliefs which were “not” what my parents held. I started taking a middle route. I decided never to come to conclusion based on 1 single source. I would try to read up all the information on the related subject before forming an opinion/belief system. But it is “still” tough for a person like me(who gets carried away very easily) to form a solid belief system. Most of the times I am wrong. However the phase am in now, am slowly learning to separate the “relevant” parts from the “crap”(like the email you have mentioned).

Sridhar’s comment made a lot of sense.