OK, now stay with me, because this could be big.

I’ve had a revelation : maybe some things are worth believing purely for what said belief gives us, regardless of whether or not that belief is “true”.

Think about it. Grok this utilitarian equation :

If believing something makes you happy or happier, and believing it has no cost or at least very little cost, then cost benefit analysis says it is totally worth it.

Now obviously, we’re not talking beliefs like whether or not it hurts to get run over by a car or whether stabbing yourself in the throat with a corkscrew is a good idea.

But most beliefs aren’t like that.

Take thinking the Earth is flat. Completely ridiculous on every level and easily disproven by anyone with a pulse, right?

But what does believing it cost a person? Public ridicule? Say they keep it to themselves. What does it cost them then?

Nothing. It’s not like the true shape of the Earth has any impact on the actual decisions they make in their life. They can believe that the Earth is shaped like the Queen’s butt and it still will have no impact on their life.

So if believing it makes them happy, why the hell not?

And that scales all the way up, too. Why not religion? Pick one that suits you. If thinking an omnipotent and omniscient perfect father rules over all and watches over you personally with infinite love and forgiveness makes you a happier person, and doesn’t make you shoot anybody or eschew modern medicine. why the heck not?

“But it’s not TRUE!” insists our higher faculties. “Isn’t it wrong to believe things which are not true?”

In theory, yes. And we won’t even get into how bad things can get when the beliefs you have made a core part of your emotional support structures get disproven.

But in practice, some utterly bullshit beliefs might just be worth the relatively minor damage to one’s intellectual integrity.

Even the truly despicable ones like racial intolerance might work out in someone’s benefit given the right conditions.

In fact, the only real barrier that I can see is whether or not the belief is consistent with the other things the individual believes.

And even that is negotiable because it all depends on one’s level of metacognition. In other words, you have to be able to recognize the inconsistency before it bothers you, at least on a conscious level.

I figured out that people believe what they need to believe when I was just twelve year old. But this puts it into a much larger and more general context.

The main problem is that we don’t wall these special beliefs off from the more reasonable everyday beliefs, and so they enter the shared communal reality we all share via discussion and debate and then have to fend for themselves.

Europeans have the right idea when they treat religion as a very personal matter, and therefore not something you discuss with strangers.

Still – dragging myself back to the damned point yet again – this idea that it can be perfectly fine to believe something untrue in order to get the emotional benefits strikes me as a big frigging deal.

I wonder what I could believe in order to make myself happier?

More after the break.

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Electric rainbow wonderland

Lemme tell ya about something that happened to me recently.

I was in the twilit land between being awake and asleep the other night when suddenly, a song happened in my head.

That’s the best was I can describe the experience. It’s like the song just started playing and I started writing it in my head in much the same way I would write a joke or a speech or some exposition in my head, except I was writing it as it played

I was basically improvising it in my head, in realtime.

This has happened before but not often. And usually not at this length or level of detail.

Because I had a full first verse, most of the second and third, and three choruses with variations by the end, plus an ending spoken word part.

Sadly, I don’t remember any of it. Most of it got swept away with all the other cobwebs made of dreamstuff when I woke up.

But here’s what I do remember : it was an upbeat super happy starbursts and rainbows up with people late 60’s pop song just positively vibrating with positive energy.

And while I like that kind of music, it’s not very me. Or so I thought.

I hail from darker realms.

But when I was paging through the remaining remnants of the dream as I woke up, I found myself thinking, why the hell not?

Why not open my arms, my heart, and my mind to this bumper crop of good vibrations and let them shake the dust out of my speakers and crack that crusty old shell and maybe even move me to a much higher and groovier energy state, baby.

And holy shit I didn’t even know I had that in me.

I’ve always kind of looked down on that kind of thing. From my lofty pragmatist’s perch, I hmphed at such empty-headed mental masturbation and rolled my eyes at people trying to get, like, so very very far out, man.

Enjoy yourself, hippies. Maybe you’ll find something amazing and new out there. But no thanks, I will remain “earthbound”.

But now I am rethinking things. A lot of things. Maybe there is something for me in even this wacky colored place. Maybe I could learn a lot from this psychic cosmonauts and I should not be so quick to put them down and dismiss them.

Everyone you meet knows things you don’t know.

There is good to be found in even the most unlikely of places.

And maybe some of us just need to chill the fuck out, man. Hop channels till you find the right frequency for you then just sit on that sucker and vibe, man.

Stop thinking about finding what is true and start looking for what you need!

Get your emotional nutrition today, muchacho.

Reality can wait.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.