Cupid and St. Valentine

Although I'm sure you all (everyone here but me) already knows this, I just learned something-- St. Valentine is a Christian figure and Cupid is from Greek mythology.

I had always heard of them in the same breath and never gave it a thought until this thread when it caused me to wonder and I looked it up.  Amazing how we take things for granted.

The Skeptical Life

The following are my opinions based on a life of dealing with various forms of mental illness and different kinds of belief.  As you will see, I've settled into a basically skeptical frame of mind, with the attitude of not "believing" at all but only forming opinions, and then only when there is sufficient reason.

Because something gives you joy or relief or peace or whatever of that sort does not make it "real" in any sense of the word.  The only test for truth is truth, and in the long run -- indeed generally all the time -- truth is the best solution.  We have to deal with the world as it is, ugly as that may sometimes be, and not resort to wishful thinking -- that is no better than drinking to cover your problems and is seriously addictive.

  

What tends to happen when one relies on untrue ideas and teachings for happiness is what is known as cognitive dissonance, as aspects of reality begin to intrude and disturb the delusions, making matters much worse.

But how can I tell what is true and what isn't?  There are a number of tests, none of them perfect, but useful regardless.  One of them is whether the genuinely wise of the world believe it -- the scientists and educators and trained specialists who have recognized credentials.  They can be wrong, and this must be kept in mind, but generally following them greatly improves your odds.

Another test is to learn to recognize when you are being "read."  You will hear something like, "I'm picking up that something bad happened to you about twenty years ago.  Well, of course something bad happened to you twenty years ago -- bad things are always happening, but if you focus on this "correct" guess, you are falling into a clever trap. 

Another is people wanting to pray for you or do special things at temple for you.  Do them yourself.  It is hard to be rude to people and tell them you would rather they didn't, so obfuscate the issue -- say something like "I don't trust myself -- I'm skeptical (not about them but about your personal ability to deceive yourself via wishful thinking).  The implication that you are also skeptical of what they say kinda follows without being explicitly stated.  Don't "join in prayer."  They control the prayer and you are being manipulated.  Tell them your prayers are a private matter.

Of course this is when you are dealing with not just outright frauds but people who themselves are deluded or indoctrinated, so they may be very sincere and do good works and so on.  This is of course all just fine, until the indoctrination begins.

Skepticism is the key -- not cynicism, and don't let people use that word (you are willing to accept as true things that make sense and have good evidence).  You don't believe because something is good or uplifting or because of tradition or authority -- you believe because it is sensible, fits the world as we see it with real vision, has evidence and little if any counter-evidence.  The willingness to accept non-belief because there is no belief that works is perfectly fine -- science and philosophy are always progressing and answering questions that once were unanswerable, so who knows?  The ability to say, "I don't know" is one of the greatest ways possible of avoiding delusions.

"Seekers after truth" often amaze me.  If they really were such a seeker, they would take courses in ways of thinking, in logic and especially logical fallacies, in propaganda techniques, in magical thinking, and in cognitive processes.  Instead they seek out cults or at least abandon their natural disbelief when one comes their way.  The default to any assertion is disbelief.  One does not believe things without good reason, not just because someone says it's so.  This is of course obvious, but there are so many devices that people use to get you to forget this that one must travel carefully among the wolves.