Understanding the ordinary

In this modern world of ours, when we come to discuss beliefs, we often assume that people are referring to religious beliefs. There will then ensue much discussion about the relative merits, or otherwise, of different belief systems (and I include atheism here as this is a 'belief' that God doesn't exist, when there is no evidence either way).

And yet we do, in fact, have a great many beliefs that have nothing to do with religion at all and which often have a far greater impact on our daily lives than heated discussions about competing religions will ever have.

If you're a UK reader, take out any note money that you have and closely examine it. What is it made of? What is printed on its' surface? What is our belief about this 'money'? If you look carefully, near the top, you will see printed the statement by the current chief cashier of the Bank of England which says 'I promise to pay the bearer the sum of (x) pounds'. What does this mean?

When the text was originally placed on our bank notes the pound was linked to the gold standard and, strictly speaking, we should have been able to go to the Bank of England and obtain x pounds worth of gold. Does anyone think that we could do that today? No, of course not. But if that is no longer the case, what does that note really symbolise? It is after all, when its intrinsic parts are taken into consideration, actually worth very little. If you examine your bank account at the end of every month and you see that money has gone into your account from your employer, how do you know that it is really there? Can we go, like Harry Potter, to our personal bank vault and see our money sitting there in a heap? Again, no of course we can't.

What about your actions every time you go to switch on an electric light? At the moment we depress the switch, we unconsciously believe that by doing so a light will come on. Our belief comes from that fact that every previous time we have carried out this action, the result has been light coming from our light fixtures.

We can take this further and ask ourselves about our beliefs in the fairness of how our society is structured? Why, for example, do we believe that democracy is the best system of governance? (And please note that I am not supporting the view that it is or it isn't, rather I am posing the question). I believe that a republic is better than a monarchy: why do I hold this belief? Partly, it's my upbringing - my parents are not particularly in favour of the monarchy and yet I was still read the standard fairy tales about princesses etc. in my childhood. Partly, this belief is due to the observable fact that if you vote someone in and they turn out to be a disastrous mistake, sooner or later, you can vote them out of power again. With a monarchy, you are stuck with the process of direct succession and there is no guarantee that a good monarch might not be followed by one whose brains are made of cheese.

We all have so many of these unconscious beliefs, some small, some very important. It is important that we endeavour to bring these unconscious beliefs to the surface. As it says in Ch.16 of TTC:

"Understanding the ordinary:
Enlightenment.
Not understanding the ordinary:
Blindness creates evil.
Understanding the ordinary:
Mind opens."

We cannot fully understand ourselves, our place in society or even how our societies work if we do not examine these beliefs and decide whether, given the evidence, these beliefs are valid or mistaken. Only by making these decisions can we be truly aware of what actions we might need to take when decisions about the structure of our societies have to be made. Without knowing why we hold particular beliefs, we lay ourselves open to the manipulations of the unscrupulous who may seek to change our unconscious beliefs in such subtle ways that society is damaged.

True enlightenment comes from full understanding (a lifetime's work) and as Socrates is reported to have said: "An unexamined life is not worth living".

Tag Taoism beliefs Socrates