(Expansion of 6/12/02)
 
 

For mind to become coherent & useful it must believe in something;
all spiritual, social, political, philosophical & psychological models serve this purpose, and have no other significance.
Just as some bird hatchlings with the potential to sing will never do so unless
they hear an adult vocalize their scale,
so too in man would the brain’s electro/chemical impulses (thoughts)
never coalesce into useful form without he adopt some already existing --  not  --  model-to-live-by, but  --  model-to-mentally-survive-by.
Men are not Catholics, Communists, Conservatives, Existentialists, or Jungians because the ideologies have any meaning for them,
but because without believing in such they would have never been able to sing  --   to think in a profitable manner.
 

Without what men commonly call, belief-systems (such as those noted)
thought would be like water poured on a piece of glass  --  incoherent,
unstable, uncontrollable;
belief systems act as does a form into which wet concrete is poured,
to shape and produce a desired structure;
the basic system(s) a man’s childhood brain unhesitatingly accepts
acts as a necessary container for his preliminary chaotic, watery thoughts,
shaping them into a useful unity.
The particular system(s) your brain adopts to turn thought into mind are irrelevant,
and once they are in place,
serving as a coherence causing container for your hatchling thoughts,
and life long foundation for your mind (and verbally expressed, personality-of-I),
they can be, and commonly are, for the most part --  forgotten.

Once you are an adult it is of no consequence whether you are a, “practicing Jew” --
an overtly jingoistic German, or someone who maintains a, “Freudian-view-of-life” --
all that matters is that your brain, before you were aware of it,
adopted some such belief-system -- some purely mentally constructed model in which, or against which your thinking now operates,
and without which it would never have begun doing so.
 

Even if at this very instant you would sincerely say that you are not a
firm believer in anything --   any religion, political party, social model or philosophy,
be assured that some version of such is alive & active in your brain;
in early childhood, before memory & outside of conscious choice
did it act as the catalyst to ignite your nascent mind;
the belief system was as a motif of notes you heard sung
which brought to life your latent ability to sing;

What ordinary men conceive of as their consciousness
is the form their water-of-thought has assumed from being shaped and contained
in a belief-system, and they normally give the container no more notice than does
a thirsty man the shape of the glass in which his water is brought.
Just because you are no longer aware of having any
significant thoughts about your erstwhile, Lutheranism, Liberalism, Lithuanianism,
or Smithism (if your name were Smith), does not mean that the way your mind automatically measures, and judges man’s inner reality is not determined thereby
(you are aware that, automatically is the proper word?!).
 

You do not have to consciously remember or think about the belief-system(s) that brought your mind into being --
that gave your brain’s random thoughts a shape conducive to coherence,
and turned them into something useful.
Once the mental model represented by the belief-system was in place in your brain  --  its job was done --  and whether or not in later days you pay it conscious notice
                                                                                                                     is irrelevant.
 
 
 

There are numerous small systems extant, from mental identification with one’s family, one’s tribe, one’s interests (occupational or recreational),
but such are apparently insufficient for life’s purposes via man,
and thus arose the larger ones which could gather under one verbal umbrella,
much greater numbers than populate families, and tribes,
and throughout the world, and throughout history, religion has been the big one,
and what better container to shape man’s thoughts into a mind
than a model on the grandest scale of which his thoughts are capable;
a picture of the bowl needed to hold and mold the water of his thoughts
that is worthy of the singularity that is the human mind;
something without equal in the entire universe;
something all knowing, all seeing, omnipotent and omnipresent  --
and he called the container --  God,
(and on slightly less grander scales: Socialism, Nationalism, and, why-does-everything-happen-to-me ism).
 
 

From one view, as vacuous as all of man’s belief-systems can seem,
their ostensive substance is totally beside the point,
it is simply a matter that without them,
ordinary minds would never be formed and brought to life;
and as antipodal to individual thinking as reliance on any pre established mental model may appear,
without them, no one’s brain would have ever turned certain electro-chemical impulses into what men call, thinking   --    but,
from the perspective daily presented here,
what is commonly referred to as thinking
is not the only form of that neural activity possible (at least for some).
 

As witnessed by everyday affairs,
the routine version of thinking serves man quite nicely,
(and only the supremely bored or dull with it find any practical fault),
but beyond the range and purpose of man’s ordinary form of thinking is something else which the brains of a few people have always had the potential to do:
the capacity to think without the need for a supporting belief-system;
the ability to wield the mind outside the confines of a model.
Its rewards are as non mainstream & personal as is the talent itself,
but whoever you are, and wherever you are,
if you are sane, and you have an itch  --  you have to scratch it.

Thinking like a Muslim, Materialist, or Metaphysician is not, thinking --
--   not as it can be privately for a few;
quoting the words of others is not using language to further your own understanding,
and actively employing any ideas from any belief-system is an absolute guarantee of never seeing for yourself  --  what is really going on.

Although it may not be their purpose, in practice,
all mentally constructed models and belief systems by which ordinary men commonly say they live and measure themselves by,
in their natural operation serve to keep men from realizing directly --  what is going on.