Convictions

They Can Blind Us

Convictions: They certain us They blind us

Sometimes they first see life as casually accepted opinions — yeah, sound right. Then, whether you’ve had time to give it thought or not, you hear it again from somewhere else — yeah, that’s what I think too. And then shoots become roots that find dirt and dig in and the ephemeral view soon becomes deeply rooted belief, and once we assume and then convince ourselves of its absolute veracity, we’re done for.

Here’s the issue: How are we convinced? Of anything?

The convictions we carry around, and (all too often) will defend to the death — whether true or not but because they belong to us, they are our convictions, and so define us — how did we arrived at them, or were we spoon-fed them; were they rammed down our throats and packed hard, harder, hardest so that they would forever remain as a total conviction of the true, the best, the whatever.

I think the Cartesian “I think, there for I am” would hold a lot more water if changed to “I am convinced, therefore I am”.

Convictions do define us. They scream to the world: “This is me. This is who I am. This is what I stand for. This is what I believe in. This is what you see, what you hear, the real me.”

You want to upset someone? Ferret out a deeply held conviction, whether spoon-fed (say, by parents) or analytically or intuitively arrived at, then challenge it. Offer some water-tight argument against it.

Disprove it and you will actually do damage. It might even get physical (say, as in war).

The deepest danger posed by convictions is that once they arrive at that status, once you’re convinced, i.e., once you know that you’re right about whatever, you are done evaluating, you are done musing, reflecting, done wondering. You no longer need (or want to) look in that direction with a critical eye. The conviction is firm, not going anywhere.

Chances are it’s logical and true: drop a penny from three feet and it will hurry down to the floor or ground. Happens every time. Well, pretty much, but this is still two steps removed from absolute truth. Firstly, gravity is a statistical phenomenon: once in, say, a trillion billion, the penny will not fall to the floor, but this is so rare that statistically speaking, gravity is a dead-cert.

Secondly, Samsara is an illusion: there is neither penny nor floor.

However, chances are also that the conviction is illogical and patently false: the damn Chinese invented the Corona Covid-19 virus in one of their labs for the exclusive purpose of wiping out all (non-Chinese) life on this planet, American life in particular. Once that little tidbit finds nourishing dirt and settles in, yes, you are truly done for.

Seeing the world around you through that conviction you are suddenly at war: it is now us against them, and they are out to kill us.

So, the checkout clerk at the grocery store, who is from Vietnam but looks Chinese, cannot be trusted, you know that. You keep a very, very close eye on what he does with the twenty-dollar bill you gave him, for he will, sure as hell, claim that you only gave him ten and rip you off.

You know this because you cannot trust the Chinese (or anyone who looks even remotely Chinese).

What a miserable conviction to carry, what a tragic life to live. And the only way to rectify the situation somewhat is to get yourself a gun — why not a semi-automatic while you’re at it — and hunt a few of them down. Doing us all a favor.

Then disaster strikes. Your four-year old daughter wanders off in the department store, gone, gone, gone. Nowhere to be found.

She has wandered out back and through receiving and is now on her way down the street toward a park, where a nice Chinese man spots her and wonders what she’s doing, where her parents are, and when she does not or cannot answer he takes her hand and leads her back to the department store he saw her exit and finds security and reports that he has found a stray child. This soon reaches all shoppers through the store announcement speakers and you and your wife, running as if life depended on it, reach security and see your daughter, still clutching the hand of the nice Chinese man, and does not seem to want to let go.

And this does not compute: how can the enemy of mankind have saved your daughter? Perhaps he had abducted her and had been caught? No, not likely. He was certainly not in handcuffs or being detained by the guards. What then? What you see could not possibly be happening, the Devil does not consort with angels, you know that. And yet, and yet.

You know that heads normally do not explode, but yours is about to.

The target of your now firmly established hate has shown you more love than even your parents by returning your lost child to you.

It does not make any damn sense.

Until you take a peek under the rock where the conviction festers and screams. How did you arrive at this anti-Chinese conviction? And did you ever inspect it for veracity? Odds are you did no fact-checking whatever.

And that’s the nature of convictions: they prefer that you don’t inspect; they prefer blind faith, and a better term than that I cannot think of:

Blind.

Faith.

Convictions — they certain us, they blind us.

© Wolfstuff