Never Believe Things

My friend Snav calls his approach to “woo” — or whatever you’d prefer to call non-rational spiritual stuff — “suspended disbelief.”

I don’t really play on the post-rationalst woo playground anymore, but I want to appreciate this.

Really, you have two options. The other is “make-believe,” which was the most honest, steely-eyed thing an Orthodox Jew ever called it to me.

But “never believe things” is my preference.

“Belief” is one of the big traps in contemporary jibber jabber about spirituality, of course. It’s one of the most obvious (if you’re acculturated differently) places where a particular (Hellenistic/philosophical/Christian) default has been hegemonically universalized.

I prefer the word “faith” because it’s truer to the sense of the Hebrew word that would be used in place of “belief,” but those are often used interchangeably around me. The trap is when the only mode you’re considering is “faith”/“belief” IN PROPOSITIONS.

When I say “never believe things,” I mean “never decide propositions are True.” That’s not the same as affirming faith in a path or an outcome.

Believing in propositions actually restricts that. It’s the opposite of faith.

Naturally the concept of “woo” goes out the window if you’re not restricting yourself with accepting or rejecting propositions, so you simply have to choose the ways of life that give you faith when you have faith in them.