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What we believe and think can ultimately lead to death and suffering and human tragedy. Our words, which underline our values and our world-beliefs, form the basis of actions. When made in conjunction with other people, or when we lend our support to opinions - however tacit, indirect or misguided - our opinions can lead ultimately to large scale policies that affect millions of people or to individual actions that cause hardships and suffering and even death.
Our value system, based on our beliefs of how the world operates, leads us to behave in certain ways towards other people and to think about them in certain ways. Often, the basis of our beliefs lie in strong feelings of anger and suspicion which we feel certain are based on reality and provide justification for our thoughts and actions. Sometimes, we may be so much tied up in believing something that we will refuse to listen to anything that may contradict our belief. We will deny, we will accuse others of distorting or bending the truth, we will throw counter-accusations. Even if something happens that directly contradicts what we believe, we may play down the significance of the incident, saying for example, that it is just an isolated event, that it does’t reflect the `overall’ picture.
Our lives are built around our belief systems. Everything we do and say stems from what we feel to be the truth. We have put so many years of learning and hard experience from life into building up and consolidating our beliefs about the world that any event which may threaten this, even in a small way, is vigorously denied. When someone confronts us with seeming discrepancies between reality and our belief, we will not only angrily deny them, but may actually accuse them of manipulating the truth, being biased and one-sided or simply being misinformed or misguided. The stronger we believe in something and the more emotions that this arouses, the more we are committed to keeping that belief. Even thinking about changing a small aspect of our beliefs may lead us to feel like we are betraying ourselves and all that we have experienced or gone through. The thought of this makes us feel uncertain and on shaky ground. Is it any wonder the amount of energy and force that we can lend to denial?
Opinions about the world and others that stem from religious beliefs are particularly difficult to change, because we believe they are based on `divine’ truth. However, we need to distinguish clearly between our opinions and interpretations and those fundamental values that are contained in a religious text. It is in the area of human judgment and application of religious precepts that we need to be most careful. Here, there is room for human error and misjudgment. We may feel that we are acting according to ultimate truth and divine dictation, but that does not guarantee that we are not mistaken or misguided. Each generation makes its own decisions and mistakes. We cannot pretend for a moment that any individual or community is beyond reproach or criticism, or is not subject to human error, no matter how well-intentioned.
When we believe that we are right, then the first thing that we should ask ourselves is where are we wrong? When we are confident that we know the truth, then we should be asking, where are we ignorant? Someone who walks blindly into the future, without examining the road he is going on or looking at the map, in the belief that he knows the way, without checking his bearings or looking about , is someone who is blind and ignorant of possible pitfalls or wrong-turnings that can lead to tragedy.
Sometimes, overzealous convictions, beliefs formed when we are not in full possession of all the relevant information, or when we lack adequate experience of the world, can lead to extreme opinions about the world and other people. When we are so committed to these opinions, because we believe it is the truth and because it underlies and justifies our behavior, and when we are not willing to listen to anything that may contradict this, then we are like blind men, walking down a road, with our eyes closed, set upon our path, determined that nothing will interfere with us.
Communities in which young people grow up isolated from contact with outsiders, or where contact with outside beliefs and other people is highly limited and frowned upon or feared, are in particular danger of developing opinions and beliefs towards others that are not fully based on reality. How can they be, since the community neither understands nor possesses enough information about the culture and beliefs of other people? The customs and behavior of others may be interpreted as strange, suspicious, cruel and barbaric, since they are not based on our own beliefs or value systems. This leads us to feel threatened and suspicious of others and to act towards them in ways that we would not normally act towards someone from our own community. Often, we take away the human qualities of others - their ability to love, feel compassion, understand, help and share - feelings that we would like to attribute to our ourselves and our own community, and in their place we assign the feelings that disturb or trouble ourselves or our community - feelings of suspicion, anger, hatred and mistrust. Because we have little contact with them, we cannot understand or even know the way they are feeling and so we tend to act towards them in ways which deny that they possess feelings or thoughts that are anything besides mean, self-motivated, distorted and hostile towards us.
The stronger our belief system and the more closed our community is, the stronger are these feelings of mistrust of others and of subtle condemnation of the way they lead their lives. Both on a personal and community level, this self-righteousness leads us to isolate ourselves further from all forms of contact or outside influence that may contradict or affect the internal cohesiveness that underlies our personal and community life. The stronger our beliefs, the more committed we are to denial and isolation, both in our laws and customs.
The danger of this is obvious. A community that isolates and shuts itself off from its surrounding neighbors and acts with suspicion towards other communities may arouse strong counter-feelings of suspicion that help create conditions of hostility and aggressiveness.
Often, however, real events that have occurred in the past - repeated massacres and pogroms - or simply conflict of interests over control of land or resources, underlie our beliefs and guide our behavior. We turn repeatedly to such events to justify our mistrust and our behavior. We know that if such events occurred in the past, they can occur again. If we know that there are powerful interest groups that want possession of our land and resources, that feel towards us the same hatred, anger and mistrust, then how can we be expected to trust them for a moment or to make any sort of compromise with them?
Perhaps there is no easy or simple answer to the problem. The process of living at peace with our neighbors may be laden with threat, uncertainty about the future and cause internal conflict and difficulties amongst our community, it may require a great amount of adjustment and soul searching, it may involve having to compromise and give up on some of the things we cherish, but in the end, isn’t it better than outright war and total isolation?
Two brothers were fighting over the inheritance of land their father had left when he died. Each claimed that the land belonged to him. When a wise leader of the community was asked for his opinion, he put his ear to the ground and said: “the land replies that you both belong to it”.
There seems to be no other road, other than mutual understanding and sharing.
No man - or community- can live in isolation, under a perennial condition of siege. When we are prepared to go to the lengths of using force and oppression to impose our beliefs on others, then we have departed from the road of the free man and entered the realm of the dictator. We may justify our behavior as being based on self-protection.
Self protection needs to be viewed in both its short and long term perspective. On the one hand, we need to be strong enough to stand on our own feet and be independent and self-sufficient and not dependent on others for our security. On the other hand, we need to be investing time and energy building the bridges that will allow for better communication and mutual understanding and that will eventually lead to living together in peace.
Ultimately, we need to turn back to our own beliefs and examine just where our opinions or actions contradict fundamental aspects of our own belief systems. If our fundamental belief is that we should behave towards others as we would like them to behave towards ourselves, then there is no room for opinions that generate mistrust, that dehumanize or demonize others, resulting in hostility, anger and hatred, aggressiveness or exploitation. If we believe in living in peace and friendship with our neighbors, then there is no room for attitudes that we know will lead to war and estrangement. If we believe in compassion towards others, then we should not lend our hand or ear to attitudes and opinions that lead to hardship for others.
In a thousand and one ways, the values we feel most strongly about can lead us to beliefs that betray those same values. The consequences of a set of ill-considered, misinformed or shortsighted opinions can be devastating when it reaches the end of a long chain of cause and effects.
· Political murder
· Large-scale poverty and exploitation
· Unemployment
· Subjugation of a population
· A chain of terrorism and counter-terrorism
When we are caught in a situation where the boundaries between victim and oppressor, justice and injustice, honesty and self-deception are no longer clear, then we have to stand back and look at our fundamental values. To what extent we are willing to compromise our fundamental values to maintain our own short-term self-interests?