Some really fascinating conversations get buried in the comments here sometimes. Such a one arose the other day between “human” and I and some other commenters regarding the nature of belief, and whether there are any positive uses of it. Without trying to recap the whole thing, I wanted to bring it up into the discussion again, because I think it was going somewhere really valuable.

“Human” talks about how Terence McKenna claimed that the only thing he believed in was freedom. And that this was the only thing he believed in because belief automatically rules out it’s opposite. To which, Alistair responded:

mckenna probably would accept a slight semantic correction regarding freedom. he would accept as fact that freedom exists and that the opposite is real too.

And “human” brought it back home saying:

i think not only was he saying that the opposite of freedom exists, but that he intended on ruling it out as a possibility…

One of the most mind-blowing things I’ve seen in a long time. I find this really exciting as a possibility. I never thought about using beliefs like this before. I’ve always (well, not always) thought about them as this big bad monster that keeps you confined in this little box and prohibits you from seeing other possibilities. And I think now I understand that this is precisely their usefulness too. I’m not saying you should live your life in a little box. Certainly not. You should explore and find out what’s right for you. But once you’ve done that, it seems like it may be okay to use beliefs as a kind of stop sign, or I earlier compared it to a sign that reads “DANGER: BRIDGE OUT!” You may know full well the bridge isn’t really out, but you simply might not want to cross it because you’ve been there, and you know where it leads, and it’s nowhere good.

Part of what I’ve been doing lately for myself has been examining my old beliefs, taking them apart where they no longer function, and wondering where or if I should place new ones. Is it ever healthy to adopt beliefs in order to limit yourself? I’ve been wondering this in relation to spirituality for a while now, but in a slightly different context. Is there ever a time when it’s okay to surrender your personal authority? Can that be part of the process of moving from here to there? Will I someday decide to intentionally adopt a belief which will effectively block me off from where I came from? I love the interpretation that “human” gives above for McKenna’s belief about freedom. McKenna was throwing up a stop-sign against control-systems, saying: “Don’t even go there!” Is there a way we can use this principle to encode something like what Carlos was talking about:

a mythical, decentralised, open source story system that uses anomaly research as the driving force of personal transformation. anomalies are identified by archetype, digested, repackaged and manifest as symbolic entities that trick dominant systems (which by their nature attempt to supress the anomalies that are the source of your enlightenment) into destroying themselves.

Crazy stuff. Okay, I gotta go to bed for real this time…