DELETERIOUSLY DOGMATIC DEPENDENCE DAY

DELETERIOUSLY DOGMATIC DEPENDENCE DAY: There’s a strange thing that happens every July 4th.. Everywhere your turn people are telling us what they believe in... their country, their god, their politics...

But belief is as far from independence as one can get. It’s a binding restrictive concept that is merely a suspension of disbelief and the opposite of personal sovereignty..

Independence certainly isn’t found in religious, philosophical or political systems. Just the opposite, people join together and facilitate dependence by finding comfort in a common thread, one usually invented by someone else.

Belief is a dumbing-down – a search for a common denominator and in the final analysis it fulfills only our need for belonging not our thirst for knowledge.

When we compromise and generalize our personal knowledge and experiences enough we find common beliefs.

Beliefs like “my county is always right”. Beliefs like “my god is the best god”. Beliefs that a belief is enough to base a lifestyle on... and most of the time fight over with non-believers.

The only thing worse is “my faith my belief”. More are dead due to that little turn of phrase than all other causes combined.

Experience tells us that when we know more details we more likely accomplish our goals. Experience tells us that the person who has thought about and detailed how to accomplish a task more than likely succeeds while the person that just believes it can be done often fails by assuming the facts and methodology don’t matter as much as the belief..

When we believe, we stop figuring it out. When it hurts to think some more, when someone shouts “I don’t want to think about that”, when someone gives you a system of ways to stop thinking for yourself and gives you something you can memorize you’re not independent. You’re a sap.

We believe in capitalism, communism, militarism, colonialism, imperialism, free-market, free-trade, oppressive, repressive, obsessive, regressive, restrictive regimens. Yet we all know the horrors of these things. It’s a matter of experience over beliefs. Yet people still believe in them.

We believe in bibles and Buddahs, Jesuses and Jains, Krishnas and Kabalas, spiritualism, creationism, evangelism and animism, paganism and popes- whatever we need to do to tie up the messy loose ends of what we don’t know by rotely repeating what someone else made up.

We don’t even question our beliefs even though they aren’t even ours. We fudge our own factual scientific knowledge so we can believe a system of magical fables and con jobs because it’s easier on our brains than to fully consider all the possibilities.

Belief is an absurd concept. It’s a scary concept too. You rarely see people willing to kill and die for their knowledge.

Today when we hear some scoundrel of a patriot reading a list of “These Things I Believe” be afraid- be very afraid.

A true Independence Day is free of -isms, and more importantly, -ists. Believe you me.