Thoughts on opinions, beliefs, and how you should hold and treat them.

preambly bit, idk, i like these

I alluded to this in my last post, i didn't want to include it there mostly because i knew i would be typing a lot here, so here we are. If you don't have the time to read this, skip to the outro bit, i mashed my thoughts into a handful of sentences for you :)

intro

I've spent a lot of time recently, trying to narrow down my principled belief system, in order to really set a good foundation for me to build on. And i've learned some some interesting things that i think could be useful to other people.

I'm not a huge fan of opinions, i've never really liked them, anybody can hold whatever opinion they want, through things like satire they can used as a tool, so from the understanding of a belief structure, I.E. the thing that determines your ideological framework, and it's related friends. They're no good. I like to liken an opinion to a stubbed toe, a transient annoying event that ultimately in the grand scheme of things, is of little importance. The ability to change your own opinion, and even hold incorrect ones at times, is a valuable method of learning about the world around you, as it gives you a different perspective on things, as well as learning about yourself and your belief structures. As it allows you to think through them more completely, which is often what leads to strong principled beliefs.

When it comes to both beliefs and opinions, i think you should hold weaker more surface level opinions, for more casual conversational interaction. I think your beliefs should be much stronger, and personally experienced by you. What i mean by this, is that your opinions are what you present to other people. They are a mechanism of conversation/interaction. Your beliefs should be unique to you in a sense, they should be constructed based on your life experience and principles (i'll get into that later) they should provide the substance that your opinions are created out of.

principles are a broader belief, they are the underlying structure that creates beliefs. You can think of them like the most fundamental layer of an ideological framework, without them, there is no framework, there is no belief, your opinions are simply detached from you. A principle is something that you can almost universally believe, there should be almost no circumstances under which that principle is undermined by something. It's a foundational construction to a set of beliefs. It's what makes them integrate with each other properly.

nap time

now that we're familiar with what im talking about, i'd like to run through some more involved concepts here. (notably what i came to talk about in the first place)

iterating on the previous to provide an example and some actual philosophy of mine.

just to help illustrate this here's an example. My current primary principle in life, and what underlies my framework with which i operate under, is that the more options that people have, the better off they're going to be. Or in essence, "more options, is more beneficial" when you come to a conclusion where you are removing an option of something, from someone, i think it's important to carefully consider the potential impacts of these. In some cases, there is an extreme net positive to getting rid of an option, like murder. In other cases it's less so. This is just one of the ways i conceptualize current issues within the landscape.

Now to get at the core of my point here, i think it's important to hold strong principles, and likewise, i think it's important to hold strong beliefs as well. When you focus on principles and beliefs, it's harder to negatively influence other people, since you spend most of your time trying to understand it via your systemic framework. This often leads to the ability to quarantine certain opinions and statements, which is not only healthy for you, as you spend less time frothing over them. But healthier for others, as it allows you to present a different utility to that same opinion/statement. Which can be highly valuable to other people as well as yourself.

problems, potentially

There is one fairly significant issue you need to keep in mind however. Just having strong beliefs/principles doesn't make you a good person, nor does it make your life better. You need to be able to utilize these concepts much like anything else, in order to better yourself, and abilities. This is the reason i spent so much time covering the definitions of these terms, and it's why i covered the utility of it, as well as some of my personal framework. You need to understand why you believe the things you do, and you need to be able to comprehend them fully, in order to utilize them fully.

Now for a bit of shock here, it doesn't matter what you believe, or what someone else believes, because ultimately, belief is arbitrary, you can believe one thing is good/bad and another person can just not believe you it's rather ironic isn't it? This is why principles are a thing, they allow people to collectively agree about a certain underlying level of belief. The reason i mention this is that i think it's important for an individual to be capable of deconstructing their beliefs, reconstructing them, however it comes about. And then forming a solid framework for you to base your worldview on. While also being fully capable, and aware of the fact, that at any time, you can do this with any belief, principle, or opinion by nature.

why it matters

The reason why this is important is simple. Over time things bloat, change, and shift. You don't want to be left stuck with an inflexible framework, nor do you want to be captive to the whims of an existing structured system. Things will change, some of them you might not like, that's fine, that's what opinions are for. You can still take certain beliefs and principles from a certain group, or multiple even, to use to your advantage.

It's scary out there, and that's why we like predetermined systems. Building your own framework is difficult, tedious, and grueling, but often very liberating experience. I went through a period of disillusionment with politics a few years ago, this lead to me ignoring it broadly, while following the specifics, which then further turned into following what underlies the specifics, and eventually i got to where i am today. An individual with the independent ability to conceptualize the world, with no strings attached to anything. I did go through a period of what is essentially political nihilism, which bled into my surrounding world, which was admittedly, pretty spooky. It's very weird not having thoughts about anything. But that led to me developing the system i have now, which i will probably follow along with for the rest of my life.

outro ramblings, probably, as well as some personal wisdom.

man this is a long post, good thing i didn't get into it in the last one i guess. I just wanted to provide some context to the political systems we all to often find ourselves interacting with, without really having a full understanding of them, as well as philosophies of life, hopefully i provided something interesting to think about.

naturally this probably isn't for everyone, and to those people, i just recommend you keep in mind that most things you interact with, that are posed as ideologies, and frameworks, and methods of conceptualizing parts of the world, are often a lot more complicated, and involved than it seems. As humans we like to abstract and simplify things, it provides a certain utility to those things, but it can also cause the message to be lost in the sands of time. It's not always just about the part you're experiencing, or the part that someone else is experiencing, it's about the collective experience of the world between you and others. People with different ideologies and frameworks will often clash with each other, much like two people speaking different languages. Nothing here is universal.

also i didn't proof read this, it's late, i'm tired, and sweaty (summer months yay) yell at me if you find something thats weird or doesn't make sense.