August 28, 2008

Why is this here?

Because there are so many blogs, a few of them by much more talented writers, you will come across this piece and wonder - "why am I reading it?" Maybe you've had nothing to do on your lunch break, and I put a disguised link to this site in a popular Wiki article. Or maybe Google malfunctioned and you actually FOUND this blog. But I hope that you are reading it for an unconventional perspective on the world.

The title of this blog indicates its general direction. I refuse to believe in the principles we, the global society believe in, make our slogans with and so forth. The difficulty in translating this notion to others is that, when I say "I do not believe in democracy" or "I do not believe in progressive taxation," I am liable to be labeled a neanderthal by some (on the first count) and a supporter, without my own consent, by others (on the second count). The key word is the verb "to believe."

Nobody looks in his wallet, sees a buck and says, in a serious tone, "I believe I have a dollar" in the same sense a certain Woodrow Wilson meant that he believed in national self-determination. Believing in anything other than a fact is pathological. I say pathological but I do not mean to say that it should be condemned. It should be examined. It is noteworthy that believing in some "non-facts" carries social stigma - belief in little green men from Mars, for example - even though people who believe in those "non-facts" can produce no more or less sane reasons for their beliefs than those who believe in God, democracy or Senator Obama. One serious belief we still hold dear is that in God, but curiously we learned to regularly put it on trial thousands of years ago, unlike our beliefs in egalitarianism, democracy and progress.

I like putting those other beliefs on trial. Not that I am above putting God on trial while I am at it, but it was most intelligent people's pastime for the last two thousand years!