Yes, a line up those ducks into a neat little row kind of a day.
This morning over coffee we were discussing rhetorical systems and belief, the relationship between belief and experience. I met a woman recently who told me she didn't really have beliefs, only experiences. Beliefs just get in the way, she told me. If I believe it, it's up here, she pointed at her head. If I experience it, I don't need to believe it.
Belief is extraneous.
What a revolutionary thought. Come to think of it though, that's a belief too, isn't it? And back into the fold we fall.
And this is how my mind has been tumbling lately. Over coffee we parsed out the differentiation between two kinds of belief structures, one in constant dialog with experience, and one built up and defended in spite it.
I've been thinking a lot about conservativism, trying to understand it (and if you're a conservative reading this, I could use your help). Today I'm thinking about it in relation to those two systems of belief structuring. Science, for example, could easily be classified as a belief system not unlike religion, but science is in constant dialog with experience, and is therefor self-regulating. If an experience conflicts with a belief, the belief changes; it evolves to encompass the new experience. There is fluidity in this kind of belief structure. The other kind of belief is the kind that confuses me—fundamentalist, if you will: This is what I believe, and no amount of contradictory evidence will make me consider reassessing my beliefs—think of creationists, or the so-called birthers.
So how do we dialog with that structure of belief? How do we create fluidity and movement within—breathe life into—a closed system?
This system is how one can so tightly cling to opposing beliefs, or rather, beliefs in clearly contradictory policies. Take, for example, the proposed cuts to all government funding for family planning organizations. The folks behind these cuts are the same folks who are so adamantly anti-abortion. Fine, your religious beliefs make you against abortion... but here's where I get confused: you want to take affordable reproductive health care and access to birth control away from our nation's poorest women. This does not serve your cause; this does not reduce the number of abortions, in fact, it does quite the opposite.
So far the logic is lost on me. Is there logic. Am I missing it?
