Category:Belief

Belief is a relative absence of doubt. One does not believe everything, one always doubts something. To believe everything, to have no doubts, is an innocence that will neither last nor end well. Equally, to doubt everything, to have no belief, is to descend into madness. Doubt with too little belief invites paranoia. Belief with too little doubt invites exploitation. Belief and doubt in fact constitute a pair. They are always relative to one another. They are tied together in a chiasm.

Belief is assent to existence, be that assent conscious or unconscious. A person confirmed in his or her faith has assented consciously to the religion in the belief of which he or she was raised. A person in his or her every step and glance assents unconsciously to the presence of the world in the belief of which he or she livees. To come to fully doubt the truth of a religion in which one was raised is not an easy thing for it is to deny the world one long abided in and to win for oneself a renovated world. To come to fully doubt the truth of the world in which one has always lived is an impossible thing for it is to deny one's own perceptions and to achieve their annihilation by thought alone. One may doubt what one sees or hears. One may not doubt that one sees or hears, even if only in a dream, even if only the darkness and the silence. Sights, sounds, the entire gamut of perceptions, cannot be thought out of existence. And unconsciously, to be subject to perceptions is to assent to them.

Belief is in fact a fundamental attitude. It is an institution. It is an organising principle of an individual's way of being in the world.