The Institution of Belief

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The belief of an individual is the strongest pillar of reliance an individual holds. What I mean by reliance in this context, is the amount of dependence a person has towards that pillar in terms of thought, activity and background thinking. You are never ready to let go of what you believe in and this is a basic human fundamental. The debate I wage today is not whether belief is a good thing or not but of what belief can do to you, why it might be necessary and when can belief take over you.


The reason belief is so strong and powerful is because it’s your core and you stand because of it. It creates your perspective of the outside world and your insight to yourself. Belief is actually a wide term and can constitute of diverse factors and stages, but what matters in this context is on how common belief can be propagated, spread through generation and generation and can craft the way society lives.


I always remember my professor talking about how this world is all about the “war of the ideologies”. Ideologies are sustained through beliefs. Ideologies create blocks for the good or the bad, but the fact is – they do. They tap into your belief system and you might not even question it. Religion is, I believe, the greatest conqueror of belief and in the diversity of religion, people around the world, and humanity at large crawls and knees to its mercy. I believe in God but I doubt religion. I believe that there is greater force and I know for a fact that in believing so, I make myself stronger. I have started to think off late, that there is a great difference between God and religion. There is a large line that differentiates the two.


The term ‘God’ will bring to your mind either the concept of God or the concept of “Your God”. It is precisely here the conflict starts. Your God or my God? This is where things become institutionalized and this is where world order comes into being. How easily do people slip a coin into the metal slit and how easy do people kneel. How easily do people without any reason follow structures and procedures of things following religious order? Order is the fact that makes a point. Religion is not about God. Religion is about the creation of orders and societies by tapping into the belief systems of the masses. There is no larger power in the world than the power obtained by tapping into peoples belief systems.


The elder will never let go and society will never let go. Belief makes you feel that you belong. So what happens when people with potential utilize and tap into these belief systems for profiting their purposes? They succeed. They succeed because the masses do not care for reason and cling to the comfort of their institutionalized belief. Even if the masses do care for reason, they believe the greatest reason in this context is that “it is beyond any reasoning”.


When you walk beyond the realm of your mind, you walk beyond what you can context, you surrender and you never know what the purpose you are fueling is. You do not know what passions you evoke and why? The might of reason, education and fundamental enquiry if lost lead to a meaningless society on a blind trail and eventually ends up hitting the wall and hurting itself.


Harshavardhan Bhat

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