misbeliefs

So when we are growing up we learn from family, friends, teachers. We go to work and learn from bosses, coworkers, etc. We get a bit of education, and work some more, we learn this and that. How much of what we learned was wrong? Or dated in some way, becomes quickly outdated and useless? So what is the process for testing what we think we know to see if it is still valid, still correct if it ever was? How much of what we learned was just wrong, then and now? That is the big problem with cultural learned stuff, there are no absolutes of right, or of wrong. When we test it, it is all wrong or we are unable to demonstrate it to be right. Now what?

Where there are large groups that have mutually exclusive beliefs, they are likely wrong. Consider the Christians, Islam, Buddhist, and Confucianism. That is a big portion of the world population. What is common is likely correct, what is mutually wrong is likely wrong. So what are we left with? A bit of behavior and morals... well sort of... they do not even agree on those.  Add in modern behaviors and morals, common practice and atheism, and a picture begins to emerge. Religion is about control of people and money for the management, not about good, or evil, not about societal advancement, not about improvement. It is about keeping secrets, not knowledge. Religion is misdirection.

Trump University was likewise. It was a plan to sell real-estate seminars. These seminars are opinions about how to make money in development. That can done, and sometimes there is good money, and some times it is a living, and for the inexperienced or the goofy, just a money pit. It just depends on the market. It is more luck and the market trend that knowledge. It is about salesmanship and the consumer with money or access to money more likely. Calling it a university is really overstatement, bullshit. Trump is good at overstatement. You Americans will see that, if you do not already know that. Trump and religions have a lot in common. Bullshit. They are both full of it.

Misbelief is simply believing something that is wrong. In the Evolution of Misbelief, McKay and Danial Dennett chew misbelief apart, but what it comes down to is some of what we believe is just wrong, and it is up to us to figure out what we want to believe and live with that.  What does what we believe matter anyway? It is our behavior that impacts other people anyway. In the end we all just die anyway.

There is a newer word "alief". When we separate our conscious knowledge from our automatic behaviors there is a discrepancy. These aliefs really show up when we are trying to make major changes in our habits, like changing our eating patterns.

It is the testing of our beliefs that is a clarifying moment in life. We can make a conscious decision to follow or explore the unknown on our own or as a group. It is our choice. Oh well, in the end we just die anyway.