Fifty Shades of Belief

Submitted by Lindsay
Melbourne Australia!

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William Clifford, The Ethics of Belief 1877

(12/2018) Another year draws to a close, and we are all that much older. Not necessarily wiser, relaxed or better informed, but alive and mostly kicking. It has been a year of turbulence, disaster, surprises and changing fortunes. Bad and horrifying things have affected so many of us, but wonderful and uplifting things have also happened. Craziness has been mixed with genius, the worst has stood alongside the best and performed their thing. In other words, things have been pretty much as expected.

Technology has kept its headlong dash toward the impossible, change has kept us guessing, and quiet times have retired. Growth in population, anxiety and shortages have stepped to centre stage, and this manic/comic era is our entertainment.

Here in Melbourne Australia we are growing at an unprecedented rate – over 2,000 people per week – and we are set to soon pass the 5 million mark, 20% of the Australian total. We are running out of room, infrastructure and services, but our unemployment is way down and business is happy. Our political scene is odd, to say the least, but it’s better to be laughed at (which is what much of the world is doing) than to be put in the straightjacket of inflexibility.

Your political scene is even more unbelievable than ours, but many of you seem to think its better than it was, and it surely is a sign of the times. Every paper I open, every magazine I read gives reasons why things are as they are and what it means. Why the Senate is now more strongly Republican, why the house turned blue, why the president is so popular – on and on with opinions, all slanted somewhat differently, all pretending to know. And most failing to have an overview, to appreciate the social changes that are taking place across the world, that are shaping the future in ways that are not only inevitable, but are tipping points.

This idea is far from new. When something reaches a certain level or concentration it alters fundamentally, and cannot be changed back to its previous state. Breaking an egg is the simplest example, because once done it cannot be put back in its shell. Greenhouse gas concentration is the best known and most profound, for it is altering our world in ways that are now readily seen and experienced. Extreme weather is fact, not make-believe, and it cannot be reversed because it has already passed the point where that was possible. (Actually it was reached about ten years ago, but politicians don’t want to know that, because they can do nothing about it except show they are trying to fix the unfixable).

There are other tipping points that go unnoticed because they are diffuse. Two are information technology, and population growth. These are far more complex, but equally important because one overloads the understanding, the other the world’s resources. Like greenhouse gasses, they are the result of our endeavours; population growth is the result of our inbuilt drives, information the result our intellect and nature.

The boom in population is causing untold suffering in many African countries, bringing fear and disquiet to Europe as mass migrations continue. Resources are strained to breaking point – especially the amount of water available – as are the tolerance of European citizens who have to bear the brunt of their migration. They are turning to rejection instead of acceptance. Plight and suffering are falling on deafer ears, liberal governments have far right candidates pushing in and succeeding, fearful of the future. Together with the stresses of climate change, conditions are reaching the point where the use of violence and repression is becoming normal and even encouraged.

We know all this because we have first hand accounts of it. Travelers see and photograph it for themselves, then pass it on to their friends who do not have to rely on instant and ubiquitous tweets or facebook news. News that is indistinguishable from lie, that is false because it doesn’t care about truth, and whose purpose is sowng the seeds of doubt and confusion. This is a bigger scourge on civilisation than all the plagues ever seen, and like a cancer is spreading through the land. We, the cynics, maintain our rage which the present government acknowledges with a wink and nod, complicit in the game. Knowing this, we shrug our shoulders and sooner or later want to give in. Whatever doesn’t suit them is branded as false news, which so many accept because they have neither the education, the wit or awareness to doubt what they are told.

In contrast, when our news sources are in the hands of responsible journalism and editors who insist on verification of the story, we are informed for future sane decision making. We are able to uphold the basis of democracy, to begin to trust our government a bit more.

And then something remarkable happens – we become less anxious, we don’t start each day worried and fearful. We begin to see the duplicity, to understand the reasons behind the barrage of static. News needs the ability to verify it. Evidence is essential in science and trade, but are are now asked to forgo that so that the grisly history of the current leader is blacked out.

As William Clifford wrote in 1877, ‘No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character.’

I wish you a safe, honest and peaceful season in 2019. That you are able to come to just one shade of truth, one that sustains a future harmony and joy - and avoids the tipping point of anarchy.