House of Eratosthenes

The terrorists out-believe the rest of us. That is likely the heart of the thing, far more so than, say, the nonsense propounded this week by Oxford University’s professor of Islamic studies as cures for terrorism: Seek international “justice”; quit oppressing; do something about Israel. It was a dreary list of misdeeds and misunderstandings imputed to the West by its self-described “victims.”

Victimhood or oppressor status — such things are not intellectual points to be digested. The terrorists believe this bilge. We, the rest of us, sort of do, too. At any rate, we don’t disbelieve it with enough firmness and precision to permit moral opposition of a truly effective sort. To repeat myself, they — the terror fraternity — out-believe us. They believe so passionately that nothing matters to them more than destroying as many perpetrators, or bystanders to all the perpetrations, as they deem feasible. To die for these perverted ideals is an honor — a tribute to belief.

Belief, of one kind and another, is the glue, the Stickum, of society. It informs action. Belief, in every circumstance, save the most accidental, precedes action. What you believe, you do — or don’t do. It gets no simpler than that.

I see another layer of rot. The problem, in my opinion, is not that people fail to understand belief is the forerunner to action. I think everyone gets that just fine.

The problem is that people can see it coming, and too many among us have opted to change our beliefs in order to customize the action-required, into nothingness. “If I believe A then I’m going to have to get up off the couch, and get started doing B…therefore, !A.” It’s one of those things you can’t see at first, until you learn how to notice it. And then it’s everywhere. “If we believe immigration rules are important, then we’re going to have to do something, therefore they are not important.” “If I believe in God then I should go to church, therefore there must not be a God.” “If the rules of mathematics bind me, then I will have to spend less money than I take in or else face the consequences, therefore math itself is a nullity.”

Believing in sloth, is a belief. Nobody’s going to want to admit that this is their premium-value, their “Hill I Wanna Die On” value. But suppose someone did establish that for themselves, but also had the balls to at least admit it to themselves. After awhile, a few years of life serving up consequences, they’d have to stop. They’d eventually have to embrace some other value, something that involves getting up off the couch and doing something…or, making decisions that “most” people pronounce to be disliked and unpopular.

But if they didn’t have the balls to admit it, even to themselves, they could go on forever. Making decisions that counsel toward non-actions…sitting…rationalizing…mooching…endlessly…

Hmmmm…

[…] blog of the day is House of Eratosthenes, with a post on the terrorists out believing […]
- If All You See… » Pirate's Cove | 06/07/2017 @ 05:01

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“They Out-Believe Us”Tuesday, June 6th, 2017

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Tuesday, June 6th, 2017