"Beliefs aren't right or wrong... they are just interpretations of the data given. Maybe the actions that arise out of those beliefs can be labeled as right (or helpful to the common good of humanity ) or wrong (unhelpful to the common good of humanity). The beliefs in and of themselves are just beliefs and benign for the most part." (RN - Day 10, 2025)
This is a postcard that I am letting go of today. I have held on to it for at least twenty years. Today it heads to Germany to meet up with a donkey lover and maybe a new friend.
I wonder how fitting it would be for this postcard to be mounted in a lot of the organizations in this country. Would it speak to a truth that no one wants to verbalize? How many organizations are headed by a committee of people that for the most part don't behave much more dignified than these "asses". It would explain the marketing behind such a postcard.
Through all four readings today, I found a quote that stood out on beliefs. It seems to line up with my donkey image quite well. Beliefs would be okay if they were something that stayed in a person's individual being as a way to navigate life. But so often, beliefs end up around the board room table. That is where things get messy and breed conflict and wars. It makes me wonder if the donkeys would have been better at those kinds of meetings than humans. Maybe less destruction would occur if there was just some simple braying at the nonsense of consolidating beliefs into a doctrinal statement.
I want to laugh hard when I see organizations declare beliefs as their foundation. It seems ludicrous that when you gather a certain amount of human beings at one place, that you would think there would be an authentic consensus on previous agreed beliefs. There has to be just as many beliefs that come to the to party as people. But it seems necessary for these organizations to label certain beliefs as what that organization embraces as a whole. Do all the individual humans then just automatically "believe" just because it is written down that the organization embraces those beliefs? Why do I highly doubt that? Conform yes, but believe, I doubt it.
I think for people to want to be a part of the community, they will agree to sign on the dotted line as agreeing to the beliefs... and then no further thought is required as to whether they actually believe them. I was one of them that was willing to sign without real thought as to what I was signing.
If you gather a bunch of donkeys, their braying may sound similar. To our human ears, we can't make any distinction between what one donkey is saying to what the other donkey is saying. It's all noise. That is what happens when individual minds don't have a place to be heard and understood. In most organizations, the individual mind is not beneficial to the operation of the organization. It is crushing for some people to figure that out after they have invested most of their life in to that system. It's heart breaking to wake up and realize that it was never about you. You were only a cog in a machine.
I embrace a lot of things now solely on "belief". Beliefs are core to every human. They can change over time, but they are still a vital component to our existence. What devalues them is when they are taken from the individual and forced into a corporate structure.
I wrote last year that beliefs were benign. Maybe they are... but benign still means they are present, they are just not dangerous to life... until they get to the board room.
