Afternoon Bird Droppings February 13, 2012

A simple word belief

 

“What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.” Ezra Pound

 

I went to a basketball game a few Friday nights back. The intensity of the crowd always amazes me be it any group event, football, basketball, baseball, soccer and or softball, just about any sporting event. There is a measure of belief existing. That belief is that our team can do no wrong. I recall an event a few years back where a star college athlete stomped the leg of an opposing player and claimed it was accident leading to his dismissal from school and collegiate football and there were those who believed him even watching the incriminating videos. The ones believing him were especially the ones who wanted him back on the field the next year.

I have watched zealous fans destroy fields and tear down field goals over the years. Belief can be a powerful motivator. Wars have been waged for little more than overzealous fans.

 

“This is how humans are:  we question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question.” Orson Scott Card

 

What if we could have had instant replay in history and refs who were unbiased and fair calling the shots through time? I wonder how many wars could have been alleviated and or never have even occurred. I wonder if Custer would have been stopped when he slaughtered a village of woman and children and or would the over two thousand warriors who rode against Custer been stopped since they outnumbered Custer’s four hundred odd men.

 

“Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.” Seneca

 

Perhaps it is easier to believe than to think, or to question life and death.

 

“We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.  You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872

 

I have watched people argue and get nasty over ideas they themselves have disavowed. In today’s news reports; literally daily we have politicians changing their beliefs on a daily basis if it will get another vote or two.

 

“The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878

 

All through history we have seen and heard of genocides due to beliefs and to the convictions of a few.  Man has destroyed man because of convictions and beliefs. The book, Bury my heart at Wounded Knee, is the story of the genocide and elimination of a people because they believed and were different. I was sitting reading in Borders a few days back and found this quote.

 

“He who does not know how to believe should not know.” Antonio Porchia, Voices, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

 

A powerful tool for mankind and yet a powerful weapon as well is belief.

 

“Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories.” Felix Cohen

 

Across the country arguments and legislation on teaching or not teaching evolution in schools continues today even after that famous “Monkey Trial”, back in the day. It was 500 hundred years ago that scholars argued the surface of our planet everyone knew it to be flat. A handful disagreed and people died for that belief of a round earth and several great scholars died arguing for that idea. I am sure still somewhere among those who believe the moon landings were a hoax there are flat worlder’s.

 

“Men never do evil so thoroughly and cheerfully as when they do it for conscience sake.” Blasé Pascal, Pensées, 1670

 

We have destroyed countries, peoples, and cultures in the name of belief and greed. Great Civilizations have fallen through the world, the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, and all throughAfricapeoples and cultures have been eradicated in the name of belief. I have been a fan of Sir Laurens Van Der Post for some time even not knowing his history till more recently. I recall one of his writings of knowing when the last Bushmen painter painted last upon the rocks near the edge of the greatKalahari Desert. As a child he heard the shots off in the distance that killed the last of the Bushmen painters literally killing a culture.

 

“Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.” Laurens van der Post

 

In more recent years the Bushman have been moved from their Kalahari desert home and huts of grass and twigs to stationary reservations with concrete houses. No longer free to roam and hunt they are to grow crops and stay put. Their former lands have been divided in mining leases among diamond mining conglomerates. International groups have taken up their cause and law suits and legal battles are still waging inSouth Africa. So often a belief is tempered with dollars or Kruger Rands it seems.

 

“Not… what opinions are held, but… how they are held:  instead of being held dogmatically, [liberal] opinions are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.” Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1950

 

“Some things have to be believed to be seen.” Ralph Hodgson, The Skylark and Other Poems

 

As I read this morning this quote hit home as each day we hear of suicide bombings inIraq,AfghanistanandPakistan.

 

“Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never the correctness, of a belief.” Arthur Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, 1932

 

This quote was written in 1932 and yet is just as viable today. In more recent times groups of teenagers were trained to walk abreast across mine fields inIraqandIranto clear mine fields so troops and armies could go through unimpeded. They would be wearing a sacred head band literally dying for their beliefs. The power of belief is staggering.

 

“It is easier to believe than to doubt.” E.D. Martin, The Meaning of a Liberal Education

 

It is not just in science, and religion, but in education as well beliefs in methodology and ways of teaching are often entrenched deeply in a teachers being. I have found many teachers who choose the easier way over the best way, which is sad in our confusing world.

 

”Man tends to treat all his opinions as principles.” Herbert Agar

 

I was speaking with a good friend recently after a meeting where we were to present ideas on how to assess our teaching and learning of students, a simple tool a rubric used daily by many educators. My friend had designed a rubric and exercise on a specific principle in Algebra I. Funny thing was in her group in a recent round table seven teachers before her presented her rubric and exercise before she did all people she had shown her idea too. I was standing in the copy room waiting in line to copy my rubrics and the teacher in front of me was copying a graphic organizer that I had designed years ago for teaching students how to write a five paragraph essay it even had my name on it. So often we take the easy way the simplest way sometimes it may be the best way. Please take a moment to consider all in harm’s way and keep them in your heart and on your mind and be sure to always give thanks.

namaste

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