That could be the title of a book or a PhD thesis – a topic too big for a 500 words or less Facebook post, but I’ll give it a go.
We may like to think we are rational beings but, ironically, the idea that we are creatures of reason is, in itself, a belief statement .
Why? Because there are many things we humans do that are not founded on analysis and proof. Things we do because ,well, that’s what our parents taught us or what ‘most people think’ around here and frankly if we sat around questioning everything we’d get very little done in a day.
When I get on a plane, for example , I believe I am going to arrive safely at my destination. I don’t think ‘ Should I interview the pilot to check that he or she is not suicidal?’ or ‘Should I take a course in physics or aeronautics to review the theory of flight before I take my seat ?’ I just put my trust in the pilot and that the people who build airplanes know what they are doing.
But of course my belief is flawed. Planes do crash – most often due to mechanical failure and pilot error and sometimes by an act of nature or terrorism. So my safe arrival is very likely but not assured and if I dwell on that fact too much I might develop a fear of flying.
Beliefs can become rules when they serve the public good. “Thou shalt not kill” for example. But then most of us can think of instances when we might belive it is right to kill someone – say if a member of our family was being attacked.
Beliefs often pander to our self- interest. Take for example the neoliberal belief spread by the economic evangelists of the 1990 ( Thatcher ,Reagan and in our own country Roger Douglas ) that giving tax breaks to the rich would help the poor.
How on earth did they manage to convince the voting majority of the day to adopt such an obviously flawed idea? Answer – because they delivered it lines that were crafted to appeal to our self-interest such as:
“Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.” ( Ronald Reagan)
and:
“There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families” (Margaret Thatcher)
At the moment the world is awash with beliefs about how the Covid -19 pandemic started and conspiracy evangelists are gathering followers by preaching that somehow machiavellian power mongers somewhere are somehow going to make themselves the rich rulers of the world by making us all sick.
(And they believe this despite the fact that the financial elites of the world were doing really very nicely thank you manipulating the pre-covid economy).
Of course , as I say. I’m no stranger myself to beliefs.
Right now I’m hoping that this Covid 19 pandemic we are living through will foster the belief that cooperating with each other is better than competing with each other in order to meet our core needs such as food, shelter,health and education . That All of us are important to society not just some of us.
But – hey. That’s just what I believe.
Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.
Funny that.
When I am told by this Govt that ‘we have this under control’ then I believe. When I am told by this Govt ‘don’t listen to those rumours and only we have the true facts’ then I believe.
Can you help me with that one Bryan. Because right now, I think we are being taken for suckers. And we are bearing the brunt of those who fucked up at border. They won’t even apologise.
So you are asking quite a lot of the poor citizens Bryan.
I believe that our border control has been fantastic, given the many thousands that have been successfully processed.
I believe there are always a minority of selfish entitled creeps who will jump fences, lie to border security etc and put us at risk (some were encouraged and abetted by Nat MPs trying to score dirty political points #NationalNotFitToGovern).
I believe if psycho-Chucky & the Keystone Kop Nats were in charge, it would be total chaos.
So you are asking quite of lot of the poor citizens @HSR, to believe your troll lines.
Herman Shovel Ready
In India, Hinduism is the dominant religion. Aren’t they fortunate to coincidentally live in a country that just happens to have found the right God?
Same applies with Islam if you happened to live in Pakistan etc.
The Japanese however found the perfect religion Shinto.
Buddhism is the correct religion in China where as Christianity is the correct religion in the United States and many other countries. All of these people are so fortunate to live in the country that practices the correct religion and follows the right God. How uncanny.
In NZ, 93% of Kiwi’s support the Governments handling of Covid-19. Of the remaining 7%, that will be made up almost entirely of people who support National and ACT who just happen to despise Ardern.
Almost all Kiwis understand just how deadly the virus is and how important it is that we have restrictions to contain the virus. The small percentage that believe lockdowns are unnecessary are once again coincidentally dominated by National Party supporters.
The cannabis referendum is supported by many Kiwis. The group most opposed and most likely to fear-monger about Cannabis will be dominated by National Party supporters.
Exactly the same scenario existed with the flag referendum. In favour of change was dominated by National Party supporters. Are you seeing the pattern here Herman?
Can you imagine just how much bleating National Party supports would be doing if our Government decided to relax restrictions in favour of business and that resulted in a high number of deaths? The level of hatred and contempt for Ardern would be at even more diabolical levels.
Do you have FACTS about Covid-19 that proves our Government is guilty of all the bullshit National and their trolls and media reps accuse them of ? As for apologizing. You must be far king joking. So the parasite Tova O’Brien is now going after another health ministers scalp asking obnoxious “questions” of Hipkins at an all important Covid briefing and even farcically demanded he apologize. The following morning we have blue trolls talking about the Government not even apologizing. They bring a new level of ignorance to the table. They do however lend wait to the prospect that at least some of these trolls etc have had their brains surgically removed and had them replaced with a sultana.
Here’s an outrageous prospect to consider. Where has this second wave / cluster commenced? In a cool storage facility importing frozen foods. Can you see where I’m going with this? You appreciate that viruses can survive for millennia when frozen? Are you aware that China found Covid-19 all through frozen chicken they imported from Brazil?
Blue trolls will not want to accept this prospect as it will mean there is NOBODY TO BLAME. They will have to change their narrative. Can’t have that can we Herman?
I would wager good money that there is no coincidence in the arrival of Covid and it being at a frozen food importing facility where the second wave commenced.
As an aside. I know personally of a family in the UK who’s elderly father died from Covid-19. Thing is he had no direct human contact for 13 weeks yet got very sick in the last 3 weeks. He did however receive “mail”. This was the only area the family feel the virus could have come from. They took his food to him and carefully disinfected everything they dropped off.
The infatuation blue trolls have with pointing the festering turd fingers at the Government’s handling of Covid is even more dangerous than the virus. It’s divisive and it’s undermining. Freedom of speech is one thing but what the blue trolls are doing will cause irreparable damage but they are too far king consumed by ignorant bias and contempt for the enemy to comprehend that.
” Right now I’m hoping that this Covid 19 pandemic we are living through will foster the belief that cooperating with each other is better than competing with each other in order to meet our core needs such as food, shelter,health and education . That All of us are important to society not just some of us ”
But – hey. That’s just what I believe.
Yes Brian that’s what i would call real transformation.
We need to change our mindset from profit before people to people before profit as a starting point.
Rockefeller’s Lockstep is the plan currently being followed by Jacinda.
I believe the world is in gross population overshoot of the order of 5 to 6 billion as a direct consequence of utiilisation of fossil fuels to:
chop down forests and jungles
plough land or otherwise modify it to make industrial farming viable
plant seeds or tubers
manufacture and apply fertilisers
manufacture and apply pest controls to crops
harvest crops
process crops (separate of readily digestible from indigestible components, dry and store)
distribute commodities (both locally by truck and internationally by bulk carrier ships)
process commodities into commercially-favoured products
manufacture and supply packaging (plastic containers and wrapping, and yes, even paper and cardboard are oil-dependent when manufactured in large quantities)
transport commercially-favoured products in oil-based packages to distribution centres (shops, supermarkets, speciality stores etc.)
operate distribution centres (the majority of the staff eating processed food and going to work in oil-dependent vehicles)
Having consumed their oil-dependent food, people in industrialised nations are dependent on energy-squandering, oil-dependent, waste disposal systems that discharge essential nutrients into the seas and oceans of the world (and in some cases recover undigested cellulosic substances and a tiny portion of the nutrients, and -using oil-dependent systems- sell the recovered material back to the excreter as ‘garden booster’).
What is more, I believe the population overshoot, together with all the forms of overconsumption of fossil fuels associated with modern living, is causing rapid overheating of the Earth that will make industrialised food production unfeasible.
And in addition, I believe the extraction of oil by conventional means peaked around 2007 and that the entire globalised oil-dependent system has been held together in the short term by extremely environmentally damaging practices such as fracking, deep water drilling and extraction of kerogen from ‘tar sands’.
I believe the entire entire globalised system was due to collapse around 2007 but legalised fraud has held the system together for around 13 years. I believe that legalised fraud (creating money out of thin air and charging interest on it) has reached the point of failure, and that the biggest financial-economic history is underway.
I believe the oil extraction business is in ‘deep shit’ as a consequence of over-exploitation of ‘easy oil\ in the past, current low energy prices and demand destruction, and I have evidence to support my belief (as with all my beliefs).
‘Seven top oil firms downgrade assets by $87bn in nine months’
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/14/seven-top-oil-firms-downgrade-assets-by-87bn-in-nine-months
I believe attempting to persist with current food-production arrangements is mathematically impossible in even the short term and that the system is already in failure mode.
I believe no one will be able to demonstrate to me that any aspect of my analysis is faulty.
I also believe that the coming election is an absolute farce insofar as there will be ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION of any of the points I have raised by any political candidate or by the corporate media.
If anyone DOES have evidence that anything I have written is inaccurate I welcome their input because I believe what we are confronted with is gruesome in the extreme.
I am not the least bit interested in unsubstantiated opinion or ad hominem attacks -which is what much if the world seems to run on these days. I have an awful lot of practical aspects relating to the survival of those close to me to sort out quickly because I believe the system will fail in a matter of months. .
To those who believe the economic-social arrangements built up over recent decades has a future, I say: “Keep drinking the bleach.”
I think you are right about the population overshoot , if not at this point inevitably sometime . But it might be as much about medical advances and plumbing as it is about the use of fossil fuel. Though the distribution of populations toward the city is dependant on huge amounts of transport.
But interestingly affluent societies seem to stop increasing population numbers when they reach a certain level. Birth control becomes the choice so for example our population would be dropping if it were not for immigration.So bringing the whole world population up to our level might eventually solve that problem.
“I am not the least bit interested in unsubstantiated opinion or ad hominem attacks -which is what much if the world seems to run on these days.”
“To those who believe the economic-social arrangements built up over recent decades has a future, I say: “Keep drinking the bleach.”
The latter is a prime example of the former. Not direct but we all know the reference. The individual implicated never advised anyone to drink bleach , objectionable as that individual may be.
D J S
You probably missed it; numerous people in Bolivia died from drinking bleach, believing it would protect against Covid-19.
I know know you just don’t get it, David, and I do wonder what planet you are living on when you write ‘So bringing the whole world population up to our level might eventually solve that problem’
because it surely is not the same one I am living on, which is post peak oil and undergoing accelerating thermal, biological and ethical meltdown.
If thousands of people in Bolivia died from drinking bleach it was because they were told by the media that that is what Trump had recommended.The lie that you just reiterated. It was a fun interpretation for some journalists and for you to put that false interpretation on what he did say but look at the harm it did to ignorant people who took it literally.
“‘So bringing the whole world population up to our level might eventually solve that problem’
That statement relates only to eventual population stabilisation , not solving your global warming issue.
D J S
I certainly did not reiterate any lie! [that drinking bleach protects from Covid-19.
When I make “Keep drinking the bleach comments on TDB they are pure sarcasm, indicating the lunacy of the narratives spouted by people (especially National Party members and MPs). One only has to drink bleach once to die. Yet there were exploiters in Bolivia who were quite comfortable in promoting the ingestion of a lethal substance because they made money out of it.
“‘So bringing the whole world population up to our level might eventually solve that problem’
That statement relates only to eventual population stabilisation , not solving your global warming issue.’
Sorry David, that makes no sense whatsoever to me.
It rather seems that you are addicted to commenting and can’t help yourself, and write nonsense just in order to have the last word.
I have pointed out on numerous occasions that NZ, like all industrial nations, is about to have its economic level (to use your word) decline markedly, and then collapse completely as a consequence of energy depletion and environmental degradation/collapse. And I have pointed out there will be a collapse of world population (die-off) for the same reasons.
The energy predicament and environment collapse are well documented, and are reported on almost daily as their effects compound and accelerate.
As for population stabilisation, well the global population of humans will stabilise at ZERO, very likely in a few decades.
Our mission, if we like to think in such terms, should be to minimise the suffering that is to come.
Sadly, all politicians and the vast majority of citizens are hell-bent on maximising the suffering that is to come.
We mostly imagine ourselves to be making decisions on our lives intellectually ,but what we mostly do is to make decisions emotionally, and then engage our intellect to rationalise that decision .The same goes for what we chose to believe out of the infinite range of contradictory stories we receive on every topical event or theory that is circulating out there.
D J S
Very true DS.
Nice.
Perhaps we are rational beings after all because our world view comes from trying to make sense of the reality we are given. Perhaps it is rational to believe in chaos if that has been our experience of the world. Perhaps it is rational to believe that we have to compete if we live in a world that we are told is organized around survival of the fittest and that is how success is talked about.
If your experience of the world is that the machiavellian power mongers in your life have personally abused you and marginalised you, then maybe it is rational to believe that they exist out there in the wider world and are an on-going danger to you.
It is not the rationality of individuals but the rationality of the context we need to address. What sort of world must people have people been living in that would lead them to believe such things?
Lets start flooding the world with stories about how cooperating with each other is better than competing. And stories about irrationality of neoliberal ideas.
Like you are doing.
thank you
p.s. I’m not sure the elites pre Covid were doing well.
Prior to about Sept 2019 they’d managed to bleed the economy to save their collective butts from the 2008/09 financial collapse.
But From approx. Sept 2019 the world economy was failing badly and showed signs that it was about to ‘collapse’. So C-19 was a convenient lie for them to blame the economic woes on and ‘not their doing’.
Yeah big business blames Covid 19 for the inevitable depression, but the blame doesnt wash when we can see that the pandemic itself was caused by the economic system itself. So capitalism facing a terminal decline causes global warming that causes ecological collapse including a pandemic that suddenly throws the global economy into depression.
No conspiracy involved. Just the fact that the tiny ruling class minority has the power to push the destructive effects of their failing system onto the working masses. That is why all around the world the masses are rising up against the effects of the system’s collapse and proving that as the vast majority the power ultimately is in their hands.
The ‘reason’ is explained by the science of biology and society. As humans like all species are biologically dependent on the biosphere, and therefore part of nature, when their survival is threatened by capitalism destroying that biosphere they will fight to the death to restore the balance between nature and society.
Today the majority of indigenous nations of Bolivia after a general strike of nearly two weeks are occupying the city of El Alto above La Paz to form a new independent government in opposition to the fascist regime which ousted Morales last year with the backing of the US.
https://www.facebook.com/374724603043709/videos/1041770946240416/?t=95
I don’t doubt your sincerity Bryan, and I agree all of us are important to society, it was why I’ve voted left all my life to this point.
But the left no longer believes that all are important.
It pursues a policy of identity politics, where only certain subgroups are virtuous and some are to be shunned and attacked.
Woe betide being old, white, male or a gun owner, or a farmer, or live rural.
Or have different ideas on anything the left decides : conservation, the economy, gangs, covid 19, or dare question the PM, the ultimate sin.
This is not an inclusive society but one being turned on itself by its current government.
> But the left no longer believes that all are important. It pursues a policy of identity politics, where only certain subgroups are virtuous and some are to be shunned and attacked.
Extermist distortions of identity politics are neither common to the left as a whole, nor exclusive to the left. There are just as many “SJWs” among centre-right neoliberals (eg the Hilerati and tech corporations in the US). In fact, it seems to me that the tunnel vision focus on identity issues has been a strategy for diverting the left away from campaigning against neoliberal political-economic orthodoxy. Blaming this on the left is part of the same strategy.
You confuse belief with confidence.
Rationalists deal in confidence. In the flight example, a rational thinker has high confidence of a safe flight, based on experience and data that indicates that the flight will be safe.
A belief is a conclusion arrived at in the absence of good evidence.
It’s a strange double standard of the meaning of belief isn’t it! In some contexts you believe something to be true if the evidence is overwhelming that it is true. But a “belief ” is something you hold to be true in the complete absence of evidence . It even implies a lack of evidence in it’s use.
We are strange creatures who think we are rational beings.
D J S
Yeah big business blames Covid 19 for the inevitable depression, but the blame doesnt wash when we can see that the pandemic itself was caused by the economic system itself. So capitalism facing a terminal decline causes global warming that causes ecological collapse including a pandemic that suddenly throws the global economy into depression.
No conspiracy involved. Just the fact that the tiny ruling class minority has the power to push the destructive effects of their failing system onto the working masses. That is why all around the world the masses are rising up against the effects of the system’s collapse and proving that as the vast majority the power ultimately is in their hands.
The ‘reason’ is explained by the science of biology and society. As humans like all species are biologically dependent on the biosphere, and therefore part of nature, when their survival is threatened by capitalism destroying that biosphere they will fight to the death to restore the balance between nature and society.
Today the majority of indigenous nations of Bolivia after a general strike of nearly two weeks are occupying the city of El Alto above La Paz to form a new independent government in opposition to the fascist regime which ousted Morales last year with the backing of the US.
https://www.facebook.com/374724603043709/videos/1041770946240416/?t=95
Yes dave.
It was the indigenous people of Cocabamba (spelling?) that blocked the main highway after the [corrupt] government sold the water system to an America company that, almost overnight, tripled water charges. They eventually brought down the government.
But fascism never sleeps. And where there’s a buck to be made, some arseholes will be there, cheating and lying and manipulating to get what they want: more for themselves and less for everyone else.
The fact is people DO CONSPIRE. They do it on golf courses, in pubs and restaurants, behind closed doors in local government buildings etc. Thus, the result of ‘public consultation’ is decided long before any ‘public consultation’ takes place, and for anything other than very minor matters public influence in ‘planning’ or ‘development’ is ZERO. The ‘public consultation’ process is simply a charade, designed to manufacture consent when often there isn’t any…. otherwise known as ramming it through against public opposition. We’ve witnessed it over and over again because there’s money to be made out of looting and polluting the environment and out of manipulating public policy.
I was alerted to a very important phenomenon by Derrick Jensen -Native American environmental activist and author of ‘Endgame’: if you are not incorporated into ‘the empire’ and if your food supply and way of life are dependent on the lakes, rivers and meadows of your local environment, you will defend them to the death; if you are incorporated into ‘the empire’ and if your food supply and way of life are dependent on ‘the empire’ you will defend ‘the empire’ to death.
Thus we witness the comments of defenders-of-the-empire on TDB; these ‘trolls’ (mostly National Party proponents of the loot-and-pollute economy) ridicule common sense because either they don’t have any, or because they choose not to use it since doing so would blow holes in their ridiculous arguments.
Covid can hopefully effect change for the better.
Such as better environmental controls and humane practises in food production, as an obvious one.
More alliances with other countries… saw this article, while I would hope NZ was more in line with the EU in terms of being a social democracy…. if we can’t get in with the EU…. then this is an idea….
United Kingdom should form ‘global superpower’ with New Zealand, Canada, Australia – historian
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/08/united-kingdom-should-form-global-superpower-with-new-zealand-canada-australia-historian.html
NZ needs to move away from supporting dictators and nations with poor human rights and environmental practises, for money…. China and US come to mind.
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