Nothing new under the sun

King Solomon may have been right when he claimed that every thing that could be has already been and that all things from that point forward were just different iterations of things that had already happened. But there sure are a whole lot of bizarre opinions about the way things work in this world. And besides that seems like a rather jaded and cynical view of things. If it has all been done before, what's the point of living?

When I first heard about Scientology as a religion, I took it seriously for all of about 45 seconds. That is until I heard about how it worked and what its practitioners believed. Then I laughed, for a good ten minutes. After all, the person who made it up later admitted that it was a joke. But that didn't make a difference to those that chose to believe

Perhaps, my laughter was a bit harsh, though. My thoughts haven't always lead me to places that made a whole lot of sense either. At one rather dark period of my life I had a very hard time not believing that all women were the same being and that their entire point of existence was to destroy my life and any hopes of happiness.

Once I moved past that place, I toyed with the idea that this life is a test for the soul of a single person. Think about it. The entire universe, every object and being within it, except for you, could be a single living pan-dimensional being. You are then thrown into the mix and given life to see how you will handle it.

What if the biblical time of judgement is at hand, and we are all being tested one soul at a time in a "real" life simulation. That's insane right? But how do you know? What if it isn't?

There are actually people that believe in the flying spaghetti monster as their deity. I am not making that up. Google it.

And due to Episodes 1,2 and 3 and re-releases of the original movies, the Star Wars storyline has become popular enough, are you ready for this one, that in 2001 Jedi was the fourth most populous religion reported on the English census report. Over 390,000 people claimed it was their religion. That's close to 1% of the population at the time. It has since fallen to number 7 with about half that number still making a claim to being Jedi. But still.

Things like that kind of make me wonder about the Crusades. With so much massive diversity amongst the beliefs that people have now as opposed to what they did a thousand years ago, I think Christians,Muslims and Jews could all be on the same side if a new holy war were to break out. They certainly have more in common with each other than Scientology, the Spaghetti Monster and the Jedi.

There may, in fact, be nothing new under the sun. But as time goes on we find more and more creative ways of expressing ourselves and combining old concepts into seemingly new and more wondrous things.

Avoid the resistance

Most people have a tendency to resist that which is new. Why?

There are many different answers, but on the whole, they pretty much boil down to fear. What is old or traditional is something familiar. It can be counted on quantified and measured. Things that have been done a certain way for a long period of time create patterns and routines in the lives of the people that do them that certain way. Pathways get ingrained in the minds of people following tradition.

The "normal" way that people do things is something they are comfortable with because they know exactly what to expect as a result. It usually does not really matter to them that the result is inefficient, painful, difficult or only just barely gets the job done.

Quite, often a logical thinking person can point out all kinds of flaws in the "normal" way, things that actually make the thing more of a burden than it needs to be. Even if you can prove that the new way to do a thing is better in every way most people will still resist it kicking and screaming and look for every reason to hold onto tradition.

Again, this is due to fear. People do not fear that which they are used to, even if what they are used to is slowly killing them over time. What they fear is the unknown. They fear that your new way will somehow be much worse than the old way even if all the logic in the world points the other way. While you may be able to show a person reams of facts and figures showing them how a new way of doing things would benefit them, until they actually experience the benefits it is not and often can not be perceived as real to them.

In their minds what is known, no matter how hazardous it may actually be to them, is "safe" and what is unknown is not. This may seem like a pretty stupid thing to say until you realize that their definition of safe is not the standard dictionary definition. What people clinging to old ways of doing things mean by safe is something with which they are familiar enough to be able to accurately weigh the pro's and con's in any given situation having to do with that thing. The new way is something with which they have no familiarity at all. There is no data, from their personal experiences, for which they can use to calculate on their own the good and bad of the new thing. All they have is your word and their own suspicion and pessimism. And unfortunately for them suspicion and pessimism usually win out over faith in other people.

The problem with tradition is that there is familiarity but no room for improvement and no room for growth. And where there is no growth there is only stagnation and death.

We need new things in our lives to help us to grow and improve. We get to have new ways of doing things that allow us to become more than we are, to fill in bigger and bigger places in the world. New more efficient ways of doing things allow us to do better in school and business and to have more free time. New ways of handling relationships allow us to enjoy more of the time that we do get to spend with the people we love, rather than fighting with them all the time.

If you do the same things you have always done, you will have the same things you have always had. If your life is exactly the way you want it to be maybe you do not need to change a thing. Perhaps, what you are doing is working for you. But if you are not happy with your life, you can choose to keep on suffering. Or you can choose to change it. But you will not be able to change it by sticking to old ways of doing things. In order to change your life for the better, you get to get over your fear and do something new.

Lack of belief system pt2

The fact of the matter is, other adults are just trying to make it in this world just like you are. They do not know everything and quite often things that they put forth as true, really are not, not because they are lying, simply because they are wrong. So even if you are not assuming that you know exactly what they are talking about, just assuming that they are correct is often going to get you in just as much trouble in the long run.

Assumption is acceptance of a thing without really testing or understanding it. And it leads to massive failure in so many ways. Assume nothing. Test everything.

So, just about everybody out there has a belief system, also commonly called a belief structure. And people build them in much the same way as you would build a house. They start out with their core beliefs, which correlate to where a foundation on a house would be and then they work on adding some other important beliefs to be things like the plumbing, electrical and cooling/heating systems for the house.   Then they fill in small details with lesser beliefs, that correlate to things like walls, windows, doors and furniture.  And on the surface it seems to work. But in reality it doesn't.

The problem with a belief structure built in this fashion is ... well there's more than one really. For starters, there is no room for new ideas. And this structure is rigid and unchangeable. New beliefs have to sit outside and wait till someone inside decides to do some expanding or remodeling. It is also a finite size and specific shape, limiting the amount of new ideas that can ever make their way in. New beliefs have to conform to these spatial limitations or never become part of the structure. In fact, it is quite a common occurrence for a person to completely deny a new belief, something which seems to quite obviously be true to those around them, simply because it does not fit in with what they already believe or what they want to believe.

And then there is the kicker, the one final problem that makes this whole concept a terrible idea. What happens when the foundation to your house simply evaporates? When one of your core beliefs changes, the whole house of cards falls down around your ears. This is the thing that causes much of the heartache and insanity within the world today. People often wrap up their sense of self, their identity, within the bonds of their core beliefs. And if those things change, either their sense of self is destroyed or they have a psychotic break with reality. They will deny something that they know to be true, creating an odd double standard that is impossible to live in harmony with.

How can this tragedy be avoided? Create a lack of belief system! A wha...? No worries I will explain. Bear with me though. It might get a little bumpy.