The Prison of Fallacious and Ostensibly Rightful Ideas through Dogma…
Before I begin, first let us get some word definitions established so you may fully understand what I am trying to communicate to you in this piece.
Fallacious: Tending to mislead; deceptive; containing or based on an incorrect or misleading notion or information.
Ostensible: Pretended; appearing as such but not necessarily so.
Rightful: Having a just or proper claim; right, correct.
Idea: The content of cognition; the main thing you are thinking about; a personal view.
Dogma: An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true.
Words are powerful. Through words, gods are made and unmade.
Since you were a child you were told what things were called. In time you came to assimilate the sounds of words to the things which your ancestors had assigned to them; likewise, actions were in the same manner and process named and termed.
In an imperceptible way, the ideas and beliefs of your ancestor were incorporated into what became your beliefs. Imperceptible because you did not posses a reference with which to contrast that which you were being taught.
As you grew older and began to observe the world around you, some of the things you were taught did not match with your physical reality. If you began to questions those teachings out of your own curiosity you were told to let it be, take them on faith, or not to question them. If you did persist to question, you were either laughed at, shun or labeled a non-conformist, radical or any derogatory term to make you cease your inquiry.
Why such a strong objection to seeking the answer to why some beliefs did not match your physical reality? Could it be that some of your ancestors and now some of your peers have a vested and very profitable incentive in keeping those beliefs active in your thought process?
There is no more powerful and effective weapon than that that is placed and used against you in your head.
Let’s say for example you see a fruit tree. You watch the tree and eventually you notice a pattern begin to form: You see the tree bloom, then fruit begins to form, the fruit forms, matures and ripens, then falls to the ground.
You take to observing other fruit trees and soon are able to see patterns in common. Eventually from all your observations you form a conclusion; no matter the type of fruit tree all fruit always falls to the ground.
In your village there is common belief that the Chief is the chief because he was blessed with a tree that the fruit does not fall to the ground and only the chief is able to pick the fruit off that tree, if someone other than the chief picks the fruit off the tree that person dies immediately.
Well, from your observation you begin to doubt the belief about the Chief being the chief because of the special fruit tree. You ask to observe the tree of the Chief, but are refused permission to observe it. You begin to question the power of the tree out loud and soon find yourself in hot water in front of the village high priests. You excitedly explain your observations to the high priests and they listen to you with great attention. After you are done with your presentation, they explain to you that they themselves have seen the special tree of the Chief and that they have also witness doubter die immediately after picking fruit from it, and that only the Chief is the only one able to pick the fruit from that tree.
They tell you that your observations are misguided and that although you mean well, you better accept the status quo. Soon enough you get the clue, you begin to understand that if you want to stay alive you must better publicly accept what the high priests are telling you to believe because if you continue to persist in making public your observations, they will have you executed for heresy.
You wise up and decide that you want to stay alive. You publicly acknowledge whatever the high priests tell you to acknowledge while inside you keep harboring deep doubts to the validity of their teachings.
You lay low for a while and let the commotion of your prior actions died down. Soon enough you hatch a plan to observe the Chief’s fruit tree. Eventually you gain access to observe the tree and find that the tree is not really a tree but something made up by the Chief and the high priests. You come to find out that you were right with your observations, and that the teachings of the Chief and the high priests are a farce.
You continue to study how is it that the Chief and the high priests were able to con everyone into believing that the Chief’s tree had magical powers. You ask subtle questions in order not to raise suspicions of your true motives, lest the high priests find out what you are up to and have your head cut off.
After much research you find that long ago, the ancestors, before they were formed into a village there was much chaos and war among them; it was not until the idea of the magical fruit tree that there was something of peace and order to come about. Soon and through generations the beginnings of the idea of the Chief’s fruit tree were long forgotten, but the system and its benefits continue to be enjoyed by the privileged few that were in the position of administering the idea of the Chief’s fruit tree.
So you discovered the whole thing was a farce and that some of your peers were the beneficiaries of a very powerful and profitable farce. What are you to do? What are you to do with your new found knowledge?
How about learning the reason in the first place the system was made to succeed? What problem did it solved in the first place and what would happen if you destroyed it?
This my friend, is how dogma has the masses locked in a fallacious prison, yet most of them can’t be let out to their own devices since they are ignorant and therefore dangerous to their own selves.
-Sapiens
