No, I Don't Get It

[poliphilo]

You grow up in a repressive, low church, stupid-headed society. You're smart enough to hate it but you can't help internalizing the values and beliefs and you don't have whatever it takes to shake 'em off- even after you've moved to a society that would encourage you in the struggle. Decades later you're still acting on stupid-headed beliefs that are unworthy of your mind. You're capable of reading books that would disabuse you of them (you've got a degree, dammit!) but you choose not to. Why? What is it you like about your chains?

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of a half remembered quote from an Ellis Peters novel in which a free character has been made unfree by abuse of Norman law and one of the characters, while sympathetic to his plight says something like 'it's the way he rattles his chains and reminds you that he isn't free.'

Sadly, qualifications don't necessarily provide wit or common sense. :o/

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Show me a belief and my immediate response is to look it all over for flaws.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

They're so warm and comfy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's something in that. Beliefs become crucial to people's sense of identity.

[chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com]

I think it is fear. My mother isn't a stupid or an evil person, but she clings to mindless nonsense because its what her mother believed or because she learned it in her repressive, phobic, fear-based church life. She firmly believes that the Bible existed since the beginning of time and was totally breathed by God, despite the fact that written language (not to mention paper) did not exist for untold eons before the first word was written. (She told me if God could make the world, he could certainly make a written language).

She also believes that Gay people CHOOSE to be gay and that they could "get over it" if they wanted to.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've been through the experience of losing my faith. It's scary and painful.

But it's equally scary and painful to hold onto a faith when you know it doesn't really make sense. I think that's the reason believers get so angry; they're externalizing their inner conflict.