(the burden of faith: part 2)
As you explore the implications of humanity as two distinct behavioral sets, you find the metamind. It shines light on rationalization, the failure of which can describe faith. The conscience can be destructive without rationalization, especially after Freud, then Bernays, and then Gobbles laid out how to manipulate un-rationalized emotional impulse in terrible and effective new ways. Faith is bunker, but add a guard and it becomes a jail.
Doubt is failed rationalization*, which is vital to reason. Reason can’t occur without at least some self knowledge. If you don’t understand why you feel as you do, you can’t be sure you feelings are your own. They may have been programmed into you.
If there is a chance a feeling has been programmed into you, you can’t trust that faith. The less you know about your feelings the more true this is. People in a modern society who claim a faith in politics, religion, or any other hunch, with out first experiencing doubt, are simply obeying their programming. They are indoctrinated and in turn are rationalizing that, after the fact.
Doubt is the exploration that your emotional risk calculation is incorrect. Today that is most likely because someone other than you has installed the emotions you feel inside your mind. To begin this exploration consider that you already have fallen victim to it more times than you could ever count. If you can’t cope with this idea you may already be a full blown proto-psychopath. A person who’s metamind is wholly externally controlled. How can I know you have been programmed before? Your guardians, first charged with protecting you from fatal events, have extensively programmed your emotions against vast but unintuitive dangers. Electricity, poisons, vehicles, abduction, and drowning among others all would have likely killed you before you had a chance to read this message. Hard proof you are in denial about how easily you can be manipulated.
I know some psychopaths read this site, and for them an exception is granted. They likely have no experience with what I am talking about. This message is not for them.
Only once doubts in any faith have been thoroughly explored, can you know that faith belongs to you. Start with any faith. Politics for example are laughable as hard science and therefore largely based in faith. It is immoral and nearly impossible to experiment on a small element of a social policy. Civilization is vexed by a human science control. You may know a particular law will benefit your civilization, but that apparent knowledge is actually faith. Your subconscious risk calculation expressed as emotion. Therein lies the risk. A clever but compassion-less politician may have placed that emotion there to serve their own ends at your expense.
To expose the source of your externally fed emotions start very small. Look at the negative effect a rule, religious or political, has on a person you know well in your community. Do not blame the individual (Likely a projection from manipulator) but instead figure out how this rule has failed them. Now work through all the people and organizations who endorse this rule, and look for any emotional expressions from them about it. Reject any emotions you share with the people around you about this rule. Once that is done you can calculate your own feelings and reinforce your own emotion about it. You now have a vantage point to discern and explore your own feeling about the societies around you.
You can get help with this, either a savy friend open to the conversation or psychotherapy is excellent at this as well. This is temporary but may be necessary at first. The world is drowning in examples of abuse of power and worship of hierarchy, so if you have trouble finding abuse you chose your helper poorly. Try someone different. You will need to travel the path of doubt on your own, but first you must climb to your feet.
Faith is a skill. Not a hand me down, suggestion, or order from another person. True faith is a risk calculation consistently generated from your own experiences. A calculation handicapped with doubt. Without constant doubt faith will quickly trap you. Distrust those who mock or attack your doubts. This is more important than ever in the age of institutionalized marketing and propaganda. Personal emotions are subtle, expressed without crippling fear, brow beating, and veiled threats. Imparting urgency without making a single demand. Retake the bunker of your own mind, one feeling at a time.
* Psychopaths exhibit unrelenting self confidence because doubt is a mechanism of the conscience and reason, which they do not posses.