Considerations on the Dynamic of Belief

I said something online and was accused of historical revisionism, this by a revisionist, and also arrogantly and abusively.

I have been pondering what it means to believe something for some considerable time now. I now see the belief is a matter of choice, that people do in fact choose what to believe and the idea that men are so honest as to be constrained by facts and evidence is naïve nonsense.

It is as if a switch clicks in the head of someone and when it does they have chosen to believe. The thing is it is only after this that evidence is marshalled. However if the belief is false  such a person, now deluded, will not let the paucity of facts, or the abundance of facts refuting his stance get in the way. So these are denied  with al the passion. What matters is the personal sense of safety and security  insofar as it pertains to worldview.

Thus the facts that the Signers of the US Declaration of Independence despised the mass of people and designed the Electoral College to exclude them, that they were Deists not Christians, and founded a State resolutely not based on the Christian faith. as the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli clearly stated, and for all their empty rhetoric about the evils of slavery they were slave owners - invoking these plain facts is to bring down unholy fire from those, usually of the Religious Right, who accuse us of being historical revisionists when they themselves have breached the  ninth commandment and tell lies about American history.

Thus it is as personal considerations rule the issue that when something is believed all too often any matters of fact that might refute the belief are themselves denied without observation.

Given this there is absolutely no point in even attempting reasoned discourse for there is nothing on which to reason when matters of fact have already been selected not on the basis of evidence or observation but according to their usefulness in confirming the prejudice, for prejudice it is when it comes before observation and indeed  trumps it.

Education systems have not overcome this because this is a moral issue and education is powerless to deal with moral issues. Yet Man calls himself Homo Sapiens - man the Wise. This last is the biggest misnomer in history when reason is rejected for shibboleth and facts do not judge the belief but are judged by the belief.

There is no almost intellectual integrity to speak of. So there is no point in seeking to appeal to it. Moreover if we cannot see that this is in part why we are doomed then our doom is utterly certain. Man may enjoy his empty tribalisms and superstitions - and this modern age has its own superstitions. Indeed man must enjoy them for he has forsaken anything else.

What distresses me deeply is that even with my best and oldest friends some issues are now no go zones .  I know that there is not enough love on this  woeful and  fallen world to agree to differ in a civilized manner. All that phrase means is "treat the issue as a  no go  zone. . .

And when I realize that I am not necessarily immune to these things I can only fall into blank despair.

Or cry to the Lord knowing that this is merely another example of the carnal mind, sunk in lies.  I am also forced to concede that except for those very few who will acknowledge this and repent of it, for scripture said if any would be wise let him become a fool - ie acknowledge he is a fool, that this will only get worse.

For it is this darkening of the mind whereby Man will be primed and ready to accept the reign of Antichrist when he comes that is so necessary to this malign and prophesied event.

God have mercy on us who know we are carnal minded, and alos on those who think they are not

An Early Marriage. A Messy Divorce

I was married very young. In my teens, in fact.

She was pretty. Still is. But I never even liked her very much. She was and still is,  selfish, vain and demanding. What really swamped my own better judgement was that she  could really tart herself up to look absolutely ravishing in some lights; and she knew how to thrill me.

With my twenties looming I was terrified of being alone, so we tied the not.

There was no love on my part, only lust. And the ecstasy she could give really only addled my adolescent brain

It has been over forty years. And she is as gorgeous as ever.  . . . .

But then came the endless demands and the resulting endless guilt.

We cut a fine appearance as a couple. My dinner suit, which she soon demanded I wear every time we went out, set her off with an air or studied and refined elegance.

And she gave me the air of the young master. It looked to all and sundry as if the world were at our feet

We achieved the praise of many, but I soon learned that I was not respected for myself, only for being her husband. Of course I bitterly resented it. She  of course  regarded it as no more than her due, and I was churlish not to give it to her. As a matter of course.  Of course

The demands never ceased. She insisted on day and night attention. again as her due. Had I given her her  way on this I would never have had any friends other than those few in the same predicament as me, and would never have even gone out except that she required it. So, no, I did manage to stand up for myself to some extent. But the constant nagging and the endless guilt was never going to end.

It was all too much.

It was endless work, or should have been, with her as my goddess. But I was no longer a teen and worshiping such was no longer to my taste.

But still she could give me thrills, from time to time, however with ever decreasing frequency. It would be crass to call such sex but it was definitely analogous.

We separated just on eleven years ago.

But now I can only hate her all the more, for though separated we are not truly divorced for I am having difficulty letting  her go. I kept hovering around our mutual haunts, and kept seeing  those friends of us both. I even kept talking of returning to her. And these people were delighted to hear this for they only saw the appearance, what a fine couple we made, we belonged to each other. They only smiled indulgently when I spoke of the abuse the nagging and the guilt. We were too good together for this to be anything other than a talk of a depressed person. They thought, if they did not say, that I was mentally ill. Or they said that she was so stunning - were their marriages as bad as mine?  that any price was worth it. Anyone who appreciated her would put up and pay up . . .

But my heart was and still is in agony.

I gave up the token of my servitude some three years. ago. It got destroyed while in transit to the dealer who was to sell it. This was an exquisite irony, a blessing in fact. Even, I would go so far as to say, a sign.

The thing is the pain is not over. This is not because we belong together. There is enough objective evidence that this is not the case. But I am dogged by the conviction, nagging and guilt empowered, that we do belong together. After all we did make some wonderful music together. . . . . .

So my orbit, so to speak,  around her and her domain has not ceased even though it is now broader than it was and so much slower -  more like Pluto's orbit about the sun rather than Mercury's.

I need a true divorce, to let this go completely, and stop hanging around, to stop clinging to the empty husk of a dead relationship. . No it is not stalking. And I will tell you why.

Who is this woman who obsesses me so much?

It is no woman. I have more respect for women than that

This was the music profession, or music for short.

The token of my servitude was not a wedding ring but my musical instrument, my double bass, destroyed in transit to the dealer who was going to sell it some three years ago

For so it is, as I wrote here before, that if one is to serve music, which is no less than what being a professional demands  - to marry it so to speak - one is either crazy or adores her totally. Being neither, or rather recovering from the craziness that kept me a musician for so long after knowing it was all in vain. I know clearly that  I am not suited to being a musician of any kind.

Yet dogged by guilt engendered by the high praise of my former colleagues, some of whom still want me back even after all these years, the pain continues. But the objective evidence, namely  - not the performances they heard -  but the total lack of dedication to the trade as shown by my refusal to do any private practice, this speaks for itself, though they of course never saw this.

The Lord has granted me liberty to do my own heart on this matter, which is to reject the music trade, and that includes amateur playing for the very word amateur means a lover of something, something I never was, forever.

And when I realize that I viewed the entire living of life as analogous to my being a musician, namely guilt driven brute force against my own heart - what they falsely call discipline - and when I  repudiate this, I shall be free

Free indeed, as the Son of God promises me

A Small Matter

This is a small matter, but to me it has ominous portents

My local city council now want to put tags on our rubbish bins. Because mine were not tagged as they were not out when the taggers  came round of foot to tag them , and this as I am very frugal in my production of trash, I got a note informing me of the necessity of said electronic tag - no tag no rubbish pickup.

Affronted by this I phoned the  number offered number on the flyer stuck in my mail box. The reason, as the appointed bureaucrat informed me on the phone, is to save money, and the excuse is the dislocation due to the earthquakes in my town whereby people have moved house and the council owned rubbish bins are being abandoned or taken with those shifting, thus doubling up their numbers in places people have moved to.  Or remaining unused.

This is all very plausible,  of course, for government infringement on liberty is always plausible and health safety security or fiscal responsibility are always the reasons.

 But to my knowledge none of us were told beforehand and it is heavy handed. Thus an electronic tag was attached to an appurtenance of my household without my consent, nor to that of my neighbours.

It smacks of surveillance to me. You see when surveillance is done this does not increase security.

It destroys trust. Those doing it do not trust the populace. And those surveilled if they know it, cease to trust the authorities. All in all it is an exercise in control simply because they can. Of course they regard their reasons as invincibly sound, for bureaucrats have destroyed their consciences in order to obey orders - the Nuremberg defence which, if their behaviour were valid  is  only ever specious when the other fellow invokes it.

Of course this is a small thing, tagging trash bins. I know this

But it is a step on the way to a total surveillance society and there is no good faith reason for it.

Needless to say there is no point in complaining, for there is nothing so invincibly arrogant as a petty bureaucrat, who thinks he is God in his or her own sphere

And when the time comes we will be expected to submit to being tagged with the mark of the Beast as meekly

Now that is what chills me to the bone.

At my age, 58 I have a reasonable hope of being dead before it happens. But one never knows