Better Than Special

If I stepped on your beliefs in the previous note, it could be that we both need a second look at the Mystery of reality and what we believe about it. I grew up thinking that believing was one's duty to the group. Now I think otherwise. Beliefs are better guides if we don't claim they are absolute and eternal, and instead keep working on improving them. They point the way until they get in the way. The duty of the group is to rethink its beliefs. Forever. Never done. That is something we can share.

Ideas come to mind through creative imagination, or inspiration. I call that Third Nature, a mode of thinking that looks beyond belief. Inspiration is something we can share, but since it is often unusual, it may leave us wondering. 

It is Second Nature to make sense of new ideas that leave us wondering, to make them fit with what we already know, or adjust what we know to fit the evidence. Second Nature is something we can share. 

If we make sense of ideas, they may become trusted beliefs. It is First Nature to use a belief as a handy tool that doesn't have to be reinvented every time it is needed. Belief is something we can share.

Years ago, when it became clear that my girlfriend and I had certain different beliefs, we agreed that our relationship didn't have a future, and we broke up. For a day or two. It turned out that love was more important than belief. Now married sixty years, neither of us believes all that we once believed. We have shared more than sixty years of rethinking beliefs which has kept us growing together as the world shifted around us. 

But there is more. An idea is itself a value-added reality with implications for the reality from which it emerged. We imagine a better future, and work to make it happen. Unfortunately, it doesn't always turn out as planned, so we have to keep checking the Mystery and rethinking our ideas to do better. That is something we can share.

Once upon a time, an old man told a story about the genesis of things and people being special, which people readily believed. Then we got busy messing things up because we believed that being special gave us permission. That was the beginning of the end for a reality in which we get what we want while nature deals with the mess. Shall we take a another look at the Mystery and rethink creatively?

Consider this novel idea. We can be better than Special by Belonging, which means we get to clean up our mess. That too is something we can share. 

That's all for now. Time to do the vacuuming.

We Belong to the Earth: my song. 139 views on Youtube. I'm famous!

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