The first sentence is the toughest one, right ?  Right.  A thousand choices emerge from the chaos – to write formally, or informally ?  It’s my own damn blog, right ?  To construct merry Aphorisms, or attempt full-length essays, spell-checked and footnote-d with academic loveliness ?  To eschew any and all conceptions and just see what comes out ?  To think ahead of time about who might be reading, how I should (should I?) gear what I write towards their benefit, their education or lack thereof, there familiarity or lack thereof with where I’m coming from…

To read what I just wrote and critique it, or move on ?!

Already digressing.  Oh well.  In the event I am only entertaining myself, I’ll just forge ahead and at least try to stay entertained.

To come out of a cult is to be plunged into so much mental disorder, so much chaos…the mind yearns to solve it.  So you find a million (short term) replacements, you go through weird phases.  You try and recreate identity, you reach out for belonging (somewhere) even as you run away from it.  For me, the dialectic was this schizophrenic back and forth thing; I was an atheist, then nothing.  I was a buddhist, then nothing.  I was a philosopher – I stayed one – but then, generally, nothing.  I believed in God, then I didn’t.  I joined groups, then left them.  I made casual friends, then lost touch.  This total inability to *stay* with something, perhaps just out of a need for self-preservation.  Perhaps just in response to a trap-door defense mechanism; this sense that anything could become total, could envelop me, and thus destroy me.  And I had no idea who I was, even that was part of the back-and-forth.  So all the more terrifying and unacceptable.

The years have gone on, some things lost, many things gained.  It would require a different essay (several) to detail out all the twists and turns and actual events, but suffice to say, a kind of thick skin was built up.  A maturity which found itself less in the catapulting between extremes, and more just solidly in the middle.  Although, also, boringly.  Being in the middle is a bit boring.  And for me, this too entailed a sort of “nothing”.  A place of no beliefs – after all, if beliefs are associated with extremes, and with actions I don’t really know how to categorize – maybe better to have none?

Now here’s a weird thing.

That, in fact, that IS a thing.  Belief-less-ness.  Should I do XYZ with my life ?  Who knows, that would require a belief about something, right ? Even a basic one, like “life is worth living”, or “Success in XYZ is rational and therefore worth acquiring”.  Should I vote for XYZ candidate ?  Sure, if you *believe in XYZ values, but who knows ?  And will the eventual outcome of their positions be, well, who knows ?  Should I date this or that person, well who knows ?  Should I plan for this or that eventuality, well, who knows ?  Science, it’s “right” about many things, but the knowledge keeps being improved on (and occasionally – made outdated, and/or utterly relative) – so who knows about that, either ?

I can imagine a percentage of people reading this and just not being able to relate, and fair enough.  For me, in those states – it’s not exactly that I’m *against* beliefs, let’s say, simple ones.  I’m a thinker.  I’m an intellectual weasel.  I studied a lot of Philosophy in college and stayed with it, it appeals to me.  I don’t even fully understand the nexus my mind took me, or all the psychological reasons why.  But, indeed it did – probably, at least, for some semblance of safety and security – or the illusion of it.  The thinker in classical Philosophy most resembling how I’ve felt is David Hume – how can one be sure of anything ?  Therefore, be skeptical of everything !  And THIS, itself, is not even a belief per se – I’d classify it more as tendency, or a pattern of thought, a “prove it, or I won’t bother” mentality.

But then, see, this weird thing called life goes on, it surrounds you, it confounds you, people live, people die, the news broadcasts the world’s follies and inventions, explorations; people have amazing triumphs, people fight wars, people die in horrible tragically (and oftentimes, comic) ways.  And you find yourself – well, I did – in the most curious state:  wondering how all these things happen, or could happen, minus beliefs ?

And/or, if there’s something really wrong with you for not being able to measure up ?

So every now and then, like now, I get back to the right place, and the right intellectual solution.  In the past, I did my back-and-forth on this, too.  Something feels different now, maybe it’s the sum total of experiences, maturity, and boredom – I don’t know.  But I realize a hard fought victory in the sphere of thought, belief, and action.  And a conclusion which is amazingly difficult, almost impossibly difficult at first, when one comes out of a Total Belief System, or a religious cult.

Namely –

Beliefs can be relative.  Beliefs can be…”piecemeal and provisional”, to quote Bertrand Russell.  Beliefs can be both authentic and not absolute.  They can help you out.  They can be what you honestly, authentically, realistically think about the world or some specific situation or aspect in it – whilst still being changeable, plastic, able to be modified with new data and information.  It’s okay to have your cake and eat it too.  It’s okay to understand that context often determines thoughts as well, the physical and mental worlds relate back to one another and inform each other (anyone with hypoglycemia can immediately know when they’re blood sugar is running low when they start feeling angry and short tempered…).  Beliefs of all sorts – and I *don’t* necessarily mean religious beliefs, in fact – I mean anything as simple as “today is going to be excellent” to as complicated as “democracy, while generally good, has mixed blessings and repercussions in Western societies” – can have their day, their moment, and maybe that moment lasts a lifetime, and maybe it doesn’t.  But you can believe things, have perspectives which inform your actions, while still having that freedom to choose differently and think differently.

To some, I can also imagine this seems absurdly obvious and redundant.  To anyone coming out of a cult though, it’s not always the case…you want “your beliefs” to be this solid, secure thing.  This object of comfort and security, unchanging and everlasting, eternal like God Himself and Divinely secure.  Beyond change, beyond assault.

So I come back to the hope that this is the real progress in me; and still, there’s an anxiety.  And an existential “depression kernel” – what if I begin doing thing A, based on belief A, and then 40 years from now, see the wrongheadedness of belief A, and strongly desire B instead ?

I guess it depends.  Is belief A “aliens are coming in 3 years, I should sell all my possessions and live in an underground bunker until they come to take us all”, and then I act accordingly ?  I would say, *extreme* beliefs demand *extremely* good evidence.  So in that case – sure, 40 years of embarrassment later, that would seem pointless.  But if belief A is “based on the evidence, I’m comfortable eating organically raised Turkey” and *that* in fact changes later on in life, how could there be a perfect solution ?  It’s an inherent human contradiction.  It IS possible your beliefs will change, and how can you do more than think critically, be empathetic, skeptical in a healthy way, and live with results ?

There’s a certain logic to this I am somewhat comforted by, which goes back to Sports actually.  A football analogy, I paraphrase from a movie.  It’s 4th down – you send in your Field Goal kicker – it’s a short kick, the odds of him making it is 90+% – and if he does, you’ll win.  Going for the Touchdown is unnecessary, and the odds of getting it are much less, maybe 30%.  He misses.  Did you make the wrong decision, since you got screwed by the results ? 

The answer, obviously, is no.  You made the best decision possible at that moment, based on the evidence. 

I think as I live my life, I am learning to cope with the anxiety of “not knowing”, while realizing the “boring middle” of not acting – based on not believing anything – doesn’t have to mean believing crazy things is the answer, either.  Rather, it’s piecemeal and provisional – it’s cool to take your best steps forward, put together the pieces as they seem right to you – and know you’re not perfect, and you have the maturity and freedom to make it all make sense each step of the way.