Thursday, June 17, 2021

Beliefs






When facts get too complicates, we switch over to beliefs and beliefs can be wrong.
The evolution of Science and Technology is definitely a boon where we human beings got to know a lot about the world we live in. Over the past 20 years amazing advancements have been made in our understanding of both our outer world and our inner world as well.

The Internet is possibly the greatest technological invention of our time. A truly remarkable feat of physics and engineering in its own right, the Internet has had a huge impact on science from connecting scientists across the globe and allowing them to share information and research more easily, to providing scientific resources and papers to more people than ever. The internet is even helping to fund new discoveries.
Each year inventions and discoveries happen, in part, because of Internet synergy. We have been learning that our reality is far more complex than we had imagined. An outstanding example is the discovery that there are apparently trillions of other galaxies with stars and planets. Another example is that the living cell is a self-organizing, self-replicating, environmentally responsive machine of staggering complexity.
According to cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman,our brains are showing us a "hacked" version of reality. He writes that what we’re seeing might not be real because evolution has shaped us with a very simplified interface to report the stuff that's going to keep us alive. Apparently our brains tell us what we need to know in order to survive rather than telling us about reality which is far more complex. Hoffman and several collaborators have put forth a mathematical argument that there is virtually zero probability that our perceptions are a true or even almost true reflection of reality.

Our brains are doing everything they can to keep us safe, regardless of what other functions they have to throw out the window to make that happen. Your Brain Neurodevelopmental focuses on internal states first and behavior second. It needs 1.5 MB of Storage just to Master Your Native Language. Research has found that approximately 56% of information is forgotten  within an hour, 66% after a day, and 75% after six days.

So the brain stores emergency or survival scenarios which have top priority. The ones loaded with the most emotion get the highest priority. When we're in survival mode our sympathetic nervous system is in charge of reacting automatically to stressful or dangerous situations. In a survival state where we feel triggered by threat, these skills are narrowed to flight, fight or surrender.

We can't think clearly when a tiger is chasing us. In the modern world, the tiger may be any of a list of threats, but our brain's evolutionary skill set is the same: fight, flight or surrender. So we need to have a dependable belief system to rely on so we can react quickly. And if any of these beliefs is challenged it makes us uncomfortable if not downright angry because often we my not even have rational reasons for beliefs.
Dr. Bruce Lipton teaches how we are programmed in the first seven years of our lives, and explains how programming early in life sets us up for gene-expression throughout life. When we were younger than 6, when our brain was primarily in theta state, an almost hypnotic pattern of habituation where we soak up family and cultural values and the basics of survival. Dr. Lipton calls the theta state the "record button" of the subconscious mind.
Tribal culture is often described as social rather than individual, local rather than universal, learned rather than instinctive, historical rather than biological, evolved rather than planned. Some tribes or even entire nations, have come up with rituals, and for such a long time of existence continue to honor their traditions.
All these practices despite how funny or scary they look once served some purposes. They groomed loyal wives and respectful children. They determined great leaders and at the same time, formed a basis of whom we are right now.
There are over 4,000 religions and at least 33,000 denominations. Most are eager to deny the validity of the beliefs of others, and religious bigotry is perhaps the most lethal of human characteristics.
We very much want to believe that we are not the result of chance.
"Both religion and modern science share a deep suspicion of absolutes, whether conceptualized as a transcendent being, as an eternal , unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality...."    - The Dali Lama

If something goes bump in the night you are alarmed. There are various kinds of stimulus that are alarming and we have to weed out or at least prioritize. Psychology has identified denial as the primary defense mechanism that most people use to cope with stressful situations. It often involves simplifying by blocking external events from our conscious awareness. Essentially, if a situation is too much for us to handle, then we may refuse to experience it at all.
We just assume certain ideas are true and that others are false. Eventually we often turn to the wisdom traditions for guidance and help with understanding our core values as we mature. But even these time honored values may not be sufficientt when faced with pressing current issues.
For example there is a kind of story about human history that is challenging us. To summarize: most cultures have a story about a Great Flood which refers to the most catastrophic geological event that has ever taken place in human history. Some scientists believe the flood was the result of the melting of glaciers that were several miles thick during the last Ice Age. Moreover there seems that a meteor storm of impacts melted the ice quickly and raised global sea levels by several hundred feet.
Some anthropologists claim that after that there was a sudden and dramatic acceleration of human evolution which occurred because advanced aliens visited our ancestors around 10,000 years ago and taught us about reading and writing. architecture, agriculture, and may have even genetically altered human DNA.
At face value this seems very unlikely to be true, especially since it conflicts with long established memes and "isms." However accumulation evidence may prove that aliens have visited our planet for a very long time. Whether this is proven or not, it is similar to an old belief that the earth is not flat, but round.  Or similar to another belief that the earth was the center of the universe which eventually turned out to be untrue.

When you hop out of bed half asleep, you just assume the floor will be there. And there are many such beliefs that we depend on to map our actions and even our identity. However,  a belief may be right or wrong and  turn out to be a delusion, error, fallacy, illusion,  misconception, unorthodoxy, or falsehood. Holding wrong beliefs can be incredibly deceiving because we think we are right. Consciously proving and adopting your beliefs can make your life much better. But randomly or unconsciously collecting beliefs can make your life hellish.
 
In a way, we're all creatures of habit. We do things a certain way because we like it that way, and because it's comfortable and familiar. Learning to understand certain powerful beliefs can help design a much better life style. If you don't find a way to transcend the human nervous system, you are probably stuck or lost, not resilient, and in need of a Reset. By stepping out of your frame of reference you see that you are in a frame of reference. This is the mystical death and rebirth scenario.
 A strong elephant can be restrained with an ordinary rope. If at a very young age the elephant has a rope around its neck, it will struggle and struggle, but the rope is too strong for the samll elephant and the animal will finally give up struggling. After that it will always believethe rope cannot be broken.

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