Understanding Our Vulnerabilities

The matter of belief is an important process that needs to be done with care and rigor.  The consequences of poor belief choices can be dire, but when it comes to making these choices, the burden of responsibility for that belief ultimately lies solely with the individual who made that choice.  There are many people who are actively trying to convince us to make certain personal belief choices, but they bear no responsibility for poor choice even if they did suggest them (perhaps even persuaded us).  In truth, everyone ultimately believes what they choose to believe, and in making that choice, they bear the full burden of responsibility for those things they have accepted to believe.

Good life choices depend on high quality beliefs that contribute to choice consideration.  To ensure high integrity of our beliefs, it is important to understand the things that can cloud our thinking with respect to forming those beliefs. There are some key human vulnerabilities that can very adversely impact correct belief creation. These vulnerabilities can be grouped into the three major categories of self-deception, fear, and laziness. Collectively, these three things are responsible for most of our inclination to believe things that are not true.

Self-Deception

It is commonly understood that the easiest person to deceive is the person who wants to be deceived.  Everyone has an inclination to want to believe things that are favorable to them.  If someone is in love, they want to believe the person they love, loves them in return, but this wishful thinking is not always true.  It would be very easy for the object of this person’s love take advantage of their belief to manipulate and exploit them.

There are other more selfishly motivated self-deception factors operating inside us that can cloud our thinking that also need to be considered.  These selfish motivations can induce self-deception when we manufacture reasons to justify these selfish indulgences.  Humanity has long been known to be vulnerable to a variety of selfish indulgences such as those listed below.

Ego Afflictions
Lust	Desire for physical and emotional gratification.
Greed	Desire for wealth and power.
Wrath	Feelings of hatred and anger
Envy	Preoccupation with what others have.
Vain Pride	Belief you are better and more deserving than others.

These ego afflictions can have a corrupting influence on belief development by creating an inclination in the individual to accept untrue notions as fact if they help them to rationalize their own unreasonable behavior.  The danger posed by these ego afflictions is twofold. First, the behavior they encourage in us is potentially hurtful to the other people, and second, the illusions these beliefs inspire prevent us from seeing the truth about our flawed rationalization thus bonding us to this unhealthy behavior. 

Curiously, the same selfish motivations that inspires humans to conspire to manipulate and exploit others can also be the root cause of the weakness in their victims to submit to this type of abuse.

Fear

By far, the most common means of propagating a belief in someone else is fear mongering because it is easy and effective.  It is easy because it can be based on assertions without any supporting evidence, and it is effective because most people are easy to scare.  This scare tactic is widely used in interpersonal relationships, and it is also a common factor in the broader approaches of religion, marketing, and politics.

Whenever someone is trying to sell their beliefs through the use of fear and intimidation, it is typically a sign of weakness in the belief being proposed.  It is also a strong indication that the promoter of the belief has an ulterior motive.  Never let your decision to believe be based on or swayed in any way by fear. Any idea that is being promoted with threat and intimidation is weak at best and likely not even worthy of consideration.  At the worst, it is outright dangerous. 

Spiritual Laziness

Sadly, most people only want to be told what to believe because they suffer from the malady of spiritual laziness. This attitude dooms them to an existence of illusion and bondage because life is a journey of discovery, and you are not going to discover anything unless you are actively looking. There can be no help for those who take these passive positions until they assume a more assertive position about the things they believe and become able to help themselves.

This lazy approach requires no critical thinking. As matter of fact, critical thinking probably needs to be suspended because it is just going to get in the way. It is certainly easier to just have someone else tell you what to believe, but if you want to get anywhere, you have to be willing to expend effort posing honest questions and accepting equally honest answers.

This passive approach is problematic for two reasons. 

First, manipulation of passive belief (just believing something you told without question) is the primary (perhaps only) mode of operation of those who want to manipulate us. Passive belief can render someone utterly defenseless against their assault. 

Secondly, it is also by far the least useful (as in not useful at all) in the process of evolving your understanding of anything. Intellectual evolution requires the thinking and critical analysis that are not being used in passive belief. 

Thinking and critical analysis are critical steps in believing effectively, and believing effectively is required to ultimately discover the core truth of existence.