This I Believe

David - Heber City, Utah
Entered on December 18, 2007
Age Group: Under 18

The Belief of Not Believing

I believe that you shouldn’t believe in anything. Or, I believe in the belief of not believing. Believing locks you in a box. Believing causes wars. Believing takes everything and packs it into a nice little package. Believing puts you into categories of right or wrong, and I don’t believe in that.

If you believe something, that usually means you believe in what it says or what it stands for. But, take this into consideration. No one is ever right, whatever they say is always wrong. If someone says one thing is true, it’s also false for someone else. It’s not right for some one to tell you what’s right for you. Only you know what’s right for you.

To go off on a branch of the same subject, I could take the “Double-Right Philosophy,” some of you may be familiar with, or in this case “Double-False.” If you were to ask someone if the “blue bird,” was blue they would most likely say yes, but this is wrong in the fact that not all “blue birds,” are blue because of albino and defected genes. If one was to say “no”, wouldn’t they also be wrong because aviary societies recognize it as blue? Though a weaker example than Eraptigost Martin’s original “Double-Right” essay, at least you might get the main idea.

To illustrate the flawed system of belief, I will use a personal example. In a small garden that my grandparents have out behind their home there is a bird bath that has several levels that rise like a tower, each resting on the slightly larger one beneath it. When my family goes up there we are often treated, around mid day, to a flurry of birds swooping into the assorted baths. What I noticed is that if the birds chose to follow the leader they would have to land on a bath lower than the four or five before it. Think of the birds as beliefs. Each belief branches down into the beliefs resting below until you get to the bottom where it becomes a muddled mess of the peoples beliefs and practices.

Much like a pedigree chart you have, at the top, one branch which could represent their core beliefs. This branches down into the smaller beliefs which defined the core belief at the top. So let’s say you believe in a person or group of people, they each have their tree of beliefs. If I believe in them or in that person that also mean I must believe in all the smaller defining beliefs. If this is the case it stops the way I believe myself because I can’t vary from the way their tree of beliefs is set up as.

So, if the primal nature of not believing is too extreme, than just believe in what you come to believe in: Stop and think if you believe in something or if you just believe that you believe in it. Make sure you don’t believe just for belief’s sake, because it’s perfectly fine not to believe in anything. More than anything, don’t ever believe in the beliefs of an entity apart from yourself.

That is why I believe in the belief of not believing.