How Our Strongly Held Beliefs Divide Us

Your strongly held beliefs in fact are so strongly held that each of you would likely be willing to fight and kill for them!

So... Logic would dictate that the obstacles that we have for actually achieving World Peace have nothing to do with our skin color, genetics or gender.  Our obstacles are purely made up and based on our beliefs in-which we identify who we are!

This idea is incredibly profound and simple that I'm in awe of it!

As a programmer, I often break complex things down to their simplest form to really see how they work.  If you just stop for a moment right now an think about what you just read, I know that it will make absolute sense to you because it is pure logic.  The outcome of logic like this is predictable and doesn't change.

Now, if we establish that the only thing in the way of achieving world peace is our strongly held beliefs, doesn't make sense that all we have to do is give up those beliefs or develop respect and tolerance for someone else's strongly held beliefs?  Sure it does!

Ahh... And this is precisely where things get sticky! 

Because we identify "who we are" based on our strongly held beliefs it is seemingly very difficult to give those beliefs up without destroying our identity.

Then there is the idea that one persons beliefs may be disgusting to the other person or their life-style based on their beliefs maybe disgusting to the other person.

But remember, you strongly held beliefs may or may not be the truth.  They are simply your beliefs.  For the most part you did not think them up,  you did not scientifically prove them from theory and you did not likely even research most of them!

You, like all the other human beings on this planet inherited them in the language, culture, traditions and experiences that you have had to this point in time!

You have developed a series of filters for who you are, what you stand for and a perspective of others according to where and when you were born.

This is just logical and you cannot formulate an effective argument against this logic because you know that if you were born into another place or time that was very different, you would be very different.

We humans are not so different than computers.  Our brains are programmed based on our experiences and if we change the experiences (programming) then who we think we are, how we behave in the world and our perspective of the world changes.

If you want to prove to yourself that the programming concept is true, notice how when you tie your shoe or open a door, you don't have to really think about it.  The pattern and programming is already there and you are not even conscious to it anymore. We are in automatic mode most of the time as we walk, open doors, drive cars, pick things up etc.

I like to think at this stage of the conversation that to fix our world and have World Peace, we all just need a few bug fixes and a good reboot to get us back on track.  Well, maybe even a nice upgrade!

So... lets review and make sure your on track with me so far.

Do you agree that you are who you think you are based on your strongly held beliefs?

Do you agree that most of your strongly held beliefs aren't even yours?  i.e. You were taught certain things from the time that you were born.  Most of these things were not something that you scientifically proved to yourself or even researched.  You were taught things and to this day most of them make up your beliefs.

Do you agree that if you were born in another very different place or time that your strongly held beliefs would be based on your experiences in that place and time?

It is important to think about these things because this is fundamental in establishing that world peace is even possible!