BELIEVING AND KNOWING

Knowing is yours;
Fresh and original.
Believing is borrowed,
Stale and copied.
Believing is a bit like one of those umpteenth-generation copies of a defective video
That people send in your emails.
Any belief is a copy of someone else's limited conclusions
About a long-dead experience.
A belief is as nourishing and tasty as someone's press review of a long-gone-cold restaurant meal.

Believing and disbelieving come cheap.
You don't have to invest yourself,
Investigate for yourself,
Or think or feel for yourself.
Belief is for the lazy --
A way of existing without living;
A way of being right
Without having to put your arse on the line.
Victims love believing --
They know they're gonna be let down,
Another thing to be right about.

The getting of Knowing
Involves effort, risk and courage,
And the willingness to navigate the doldrums of belief-less Not-Knowing.
No-one gets to Knowing without passing through Not-knowing.
And all minds hate not-knowing.

And if you believe any of the above
You haven't been paying attention.

Do beliefs have any useful function?
I think so.
They make temporary connections between points of real experience,
Bridging intervening gulfs of what I don't know.
They make good temporary ladders and scaffolds
On which I can climb to a different viewpoint
Enabling me to see from a different perspective.

But the key word is "temporary".
They should be used and demolished as quickly and as often as possible,
Before they become part of the landscape.