The Certainty PrincipleI have been following the three part series Do You Determine Your Beliefs, or Do Your Beliefs Determine You? at Lifehack [The links to all three parts are provided at the end of this post].
In Do You Determine Your Beliefs, or Do Your Beliefs Determine You? the writer examines whether a person forms their own beliefs or whether they believe what is handed down to them. More pertinently, he asks the question, whether a person examines the beliefs they hold and tries to understand why they believe what they believe.
This is something that is not asked often enough by Deafies and deafies, but more pertinently, the latter group. We mustn’t forget the Hearing complicity in this, for it is they who have a larger say, than we would like, in how deafness is thought about and debated.
But it does beg some serious thought. How many Deafies and deafies actually think about the views on deafness and disability they hold? How many Deafies and deafies question those very beliefs? How many challenge them?
You can ask the same of hearing people. It’s only fair, since they have such an influence on our good selves. How many actively examine, question and challenge their views on deafness and disability. How many think about the effects their beliefs have on Deaf, deaf and disabled people? How many hearing people are actually conscious of the consequences [the imposition] of their beliefs has on Deaf, deaf, and disabled people?
Spare me the parent has the right to determine what’s best for their child argument, which, while true, has the effect of sidelining any serious critical examination of these long cherished beliefs. Which does nothing to further knowledge and understanding, and instead, entrenching what I call The Certainty Principle. Which in turn contributes to the pointless debates Deaf, deaf and hearing are forever emrboiled in.
The Doing Deaf Differently meme, the responses to the Human & Fertilisation Embryo Bill that caused a furore earlier this year, illustrate views and debates that are without much criticla thought, let alone insight. But, then there is this issue, people don’t like being challenged do they?
Leaving deafness aside for a moment, this theme brings to mind the recent Proposition 8, regarding Gay Marraige. Once again, the arguments against Gay marriage follow the same trusty Certainty Principle, in that many respondents on many of the blogs, forums, etc., just offer a view that assumes alot, with not much thought [let alone deep and meaningful analysis] and understands nothing. Try the comments sections on the following for size: On the passage of Proposition 8, Marriage Needs Gay People, Gay Marriage Ban: Should Calif. Courts stay out?, Why Can’t We Be Married?, and post-Prop 8: seek an education-based reversal, not a legal challenge.
Indeed, many of them derive from the same lazy thinking patterns that people used to contribute to the Human & Fertilisation Embryo Bill issue.
Not all is gloom and doom though. There are many people out there, who are beavering away to better human knowledge and understanding. Many can be found responding [administering] to the sick, the ill-informed and the ignorant [and in many of the blogs, forums, etc., that I have just mentioned].
Further Reading:
Do You Determine Your Beliefs, or Do Your Beliefs Determine You? Part One
Do You Determine Your Beliefs, or Do Your Beliefs Determine You? Part Two
Do You Determine Your Beliefs, or Do Your Beliefs Determine You? Part Three
The Certainty Principle
Doing Deaf Differently
Human & Fertilisation Embryo Bill
One Response to “Do You Determine Your Beliefs, or Do Others Determine Your Beliefs?”
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
J. Krishnamurti
As David Wells pointed out in his book “Losing Our Virtue” the postmodern mind has substituted values for virtues; personality for character; shame for guilt; the self for human nature in God’s image- and the exchange has been devastating for our culture. Consider the last of these substitutions. As Wells pointed out, the self is unique to each individual such that no two individuals have a common reality- except for that narcissistic and nihilistic swamp in which they paddle around in a vain hope of landing on common moral ground.
Ecnarb