Note: For those into literary fiction, there is a relatively new publisher in Texas that would like your attention. They asked me to post a link to their site. Presumably they know what they are asking, so here is their site. With Winter Solstice upon us, maybe there is a gift for the literary person in your life.

The willingness to accept something as true, without evidence to support it, is the essence of belief. Someone tells you something and you can either accept what is said as true or reject it, without having much to go on because people rarely layout factual cases for the things they say. Your buddy at the office tells you he heard layoffs are coming, but his only proof is where he heard it. You have to decide whether to accept what he says or reject it, based on other factors.

Belief is the thing at the center of religion, culture, and ideology. You grow up learning about Wotan and his wandering. You accept it as true, even though there is never any evidence to support the existence of Wotan. You became a communist because you learned about historical materialism, and it explained everything. You continue to celebrate Christmas, despite being a pagan communist, because you were told it is what your people do regardless of their religion.

Biologically, belief is assumed to be one of modern man’s oldest traits. Belief, which is often confused with religion, probably co-evolved with language. Taken together it allows for humans to pass along complex and abstract ideas from one place to another and one generation to another. You can read the Epic of Gilgamesh today, in your native language, and learn something about the people who produced it. The abstract concepts traveled over time and place to you.

To get a better sense of the power of belief, think about a race of humans that is devoid of belief so all claims must be backed by proof. Children grow up demanding proof of everything said by their parents. School children demand proof of every assertion made by their teachers. The boss of the corporation is required to prove that diversity is the company’s greatest strength. Humans would never have made it out of the trees without a willingness to believe what they are told.

Like most human traits, belief seems to operate on a spectrum. Everyone knows a gullible person who trusts everyone. Then you have the devout person who accepts everything about her particular religion. On the other hand, we have the skeptic who is willing to question claims that seem a bit over the top. This person is different from the cynic, who assumes everything is a lie. The bulk of people lie between the serious skeptic and the generally trusting.

Belief is probably why democracy ends in disaster. The point of democracy is to have policies that reflect the general will of the people. In theory this means figuring out what most people will accept. You cannot make everyone happy, even in a small group ordering in lunch, but you can make most people happy and those outliers happy enough so they do not revolt. In theory, democracy is ordering pizza for lunch because no one hates it and most people like it.

In reality, democracy quickly turns into a game of convincing the majority to go along with whatever benefits the few. If you and your conspirators can get fifty percent plus one to agree to your scheme, it will be very good for you. Of course, others have their schemes so that democracy quickly moves from understanding the will of the people to persuading the majority. In reality, democracy is ordering Chinese after having convinced the majority that it is the right choice.

That phrase “right choice” is critical. It is never about facts and reason, but about the morally correct choice. Democracy rests on the assertion that the morally correct choice is that which satisfies the needs and demands of most people. Therefore, the way to persuade someone is to convince them that the majority already believes whatever it is you are pitching. In practice, democracy is telling each person that everyone really wants Chinese, except those troublemakers in the pizza party.

This is where belief comes into the room. In such conditions, the true believer will always have an advantage over the skeptic and especially the cynic because the fanatic shares the language and thought processes of the typical believer. Since most people are generally willing to believe what is told to them, as long as the source has some trust capital, the fanatic shares with the typical person that willingness to believe, even if it is in the extreme. The fanatic speaks the common language.

The skeptic, on the other hand, lacks the ability to naturally communicate with the typical person because he questions what is asserted. The skeptic is not trafficking in alternative beliefs but in the lack of belief. This naturally means the audience willing to hear his questions is smaller than that of the fanatic. The cynic is trafficking in the denial of belief, so his market is the smallest. It is why the word cynic has a negative connotation in our democratic societies.

In the game of persuasion, the true believer starts with an enormous advantage because the majority is tuned to believe. There are enough skeptics to force the fanatics to make their case, but they get to make their case in moral terms, rather than factual ones, which is why they so often carry the day. Humans would rather do the morally right thing than the empirically right thing. This reality of the human condition is why democracy falls prey to fanatics and charlatans.

There is another piece to this. Humans in the main are believing machines so they will believe in something. This provides another advantage for the fanatic. In the absence of a better belief, the typical person will still listen to the fanatic, despite his many factual errors, until a better set of beliefs come along. Since the skeptic is never selling belief, but merely questioning it, he never reaps the rewards of his successful questioning of the fanatic. A new fanatic always steps into that breech.

It is why fanatics and charlatans have come to dominate Western countries. Since the Cold War, the West has embraced the idea of democracy, which has unleashed the fanatics and charlatans, who in turn promote democracy as the only moral choice, because it is the manure that fertilizes them. The death spiral of the West is the death spiral of every democracy. Without hard limits, the people will follow fanatics promising salvation until there is nothing left to save.

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