There are people who think and people who do. People who think, are those who think what the world should be like, trying to feel it's laws, and trying to make sense of the whole chaotic mess. People who do are people to shape that world through their actions, trying to create something, and make something out of all of it.
There are people who think, and people who do.
I remember once I expressed my opinion that I believed that morality is a social construct to someone. He looked at me and said that he had no respect for people who believed as such. Utterly no respect and disgusted and horrified that even such an idea does exist. Perhaps, had I not known him, I would have viewed that as a complete persecution of me as a person and my atheistic non-beliefs. No, years later it strikes me as an outright persecution, of how I never knew anyone, and a direct attack on what I believe.
There are people who think, and people who do. Action, reaction. I figured the whole belief system exists based solely on the limitations of our own intelligence. That as human beings there are vast gaps in our knowledge, that the only way to fill those gaps is with beliefs. There are unknown unknowns out there, and incidently, these were the words of Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, on the war on Iraq, and perhaps it'll be nice to contrast him with Socrates for being the wisest man in Greece for knowing what he doesn't know. It's rather rare we get a confession from a politician that he is a fool, but we live by what we get. But there are unknowns. The unknowable unknowns. So we fill this gap up with beliefs.
There are things we know, and things we don't know, and we replace the things we don't know with things we believe to be true. Then we can claim with much falsehood that we know everything.
The whole point of knowing everything is to act consequentially. Because after all, if we know nothing, we can't get anything to happen the way we want it to. Imagine for a moment we know nothing about a car. Presented with three pedals and a steering wheel, if we knew nothing about a car, how would we get it to act according to our will? Maybe a car is even too simple, what about a computer? Many people are confounded by even the simplest functions of a word processor. Without knowledge, how would one do anything at all as typing out a document?
Therefore a simple expression has been said, that knowledge is the conduit of which we apply our wills to shape reality.
But as said before, knowledge is imperfect and lacking in some sense. Belief to knowledge is perhaps what cosmetics is to an ugly person. It fills in those gaps of knowledge, that we don't know, it is pseudo-knowledge where we can then act as though our beliefs are our knowledge and apply our wills accordingly. So this means that belief is just about as important as knowledge, that it complements knowledge, where knowledge fails. However, unlike belief, knowledge is infallible. And when it comes to a conflict between belief and knowledge, one must cede to the other.
Knowledge is immutable, unchanging and constant. Knowledge that changes is actually a belief, or the in the words of academia, an assumption that has a logical conclusion.
There are people who think, and people who do. Thinkers are all the philosophers and scientists in the world. Doers are the engineers and politicians in the world. Forgive me, but I have a great disdain for philosophers and politicians, neither ones being a profession of much utility.
So far, I've vaguely established a link between the will, the self, I, me, individual, all the way to the knowledge, then to belief, then to acting in the real world. Anyway, here my thoughts become iffy. What should then be the first question that a person asks?
One of the questions I've been grappling with all my life is: What is the meaning of life? But I think that is completely out of the context. The meaning of life is directly related to what should I do with my will, my knowledge and my beliefs with regards to the world.
What about the question, who am I? Or rather who is the will? I guess that question can only be answered with respect to the world. Rather isn't it our actions who determine who we are? That we, as individuals are reflected in the eyes of others, and that alone, without respects to anything at all, with no origin or fixed point for introspection, that we are nothing? We are shaped by our environment, and we would be nothing if our enviroment was nothing. But this idea itself opens another whole avenue for discussion, but taking that aside, and accepting this for a moment, that this isn't exactly the first question to be asked because we have to interact with the world first to get an answer.
Again, I look at the whole process which to me looks like this:
Self => Knowledge + Belief => Reality
Since the self cannot be answered without reality, and that the question of what to do with self, knowledge, belief with regards to reality is a question of every aspect, I think the one fundamental thing that is lacking is the belief part. Knowledge is immutable, self and reality is undefined without the conduit, so the only question left is, what is belief?
Or rather, what do I believe in?
But beliefs can be conflicting too, so there must exist one belief that overrides other beliefs if there ever was conflict. So what is this prime belief? If I were to ask a question, what would that question be? I think it's somewhat of a cross between, what do you believe is right and what do you believe to be always true? The sort of prime belief that defies even knowledge.
It's the sort of of question that asks, what is most important to you? Or which ideal is most important to you? Or which virtue is most important to you? So that is the sort of question which establishes that prime belief.
From this one belief, all other beliefs must concur. So perhaps, this is the first question.
