One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven
- Find What You Believe In
Most young men in Australia today - and most adults - are in a very dangerous state. They have no spiritual belief.
That doesn't mean I'm trying to convert you to any particular religion. I'm not. Nevertheless people who have a strong religious belief may be better off than people who don't, in the short term anyway.
In the long term it can be unhealthy to commit to a religious system that you haven't thought through yourself. In other words it's better to come to a set of beliefs because you honestly, truly and deeply believe them, not because you've had them drummed into you all your life.
Among the major belief systems that have been practised in Australia are the aboriginal belief system, the Christian one, and more recently the Jewish and Islamic ones.
As well, smaller numbers of people are committed to Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto, Baha'i and other religions.
The more you know about different religions, the better. The more you think about these issues, the better. At the end of your life you may not have come to any conclusion about God and religion, but at least you've given it your best shot. The dangerous state I spoke of, having no spiritual belief, applies only to people who don't think about this stuff, who don't even look for religious truth.
There is no more important topic for human beings to contemplate. Is there a God? Were we created or did we just happen? Is there a purpose to our existence? Is there a life after death? For as long as humans have existed we can be sure that they have wondered about these matters. There has never been, as far as we can tell, a society which has not believed in a god or gods.
Maybe the problems we have in western society are partly a result of our lack of belief. The fast growth of science has made us question everything, and trust only logical explanations. Science is dedicated to solving mysteries; religions are dedicated to maintaining them.
As well, many organised religions have done themselves damage by insisting on silly and meaningless doctrine, or have been damaged by their leaders' immoral activities.
Truth is truth, and if a religious leader steals money from his followers or sexually assaults some of them, it doesn't mean that the teachings of that religion are false. But it's not surprising that people feel angry, disillusioned and betrayed in those circumstances.
Karl Marx argued that 'religion is the opiate of the masses'; in other words, religion was cynically used by powerful people to keep the rest of the population under control. It was a drug that tranquillised them, so they didn't realise how awful their lives really were.
I don't know if that's true or not. I don't want to believe it, but even if there is some truth in it, I think the picture is more complicated than Marx suggested.
I suspect, though, that as religion has faded in importance for many people, they have found other things to replace it. One of the most obvious is sport. By becoming obsessed with sport, by following a team or a player with avid interest. by watching sport 'religiously' on TV, people escape from the reality of their lives.
'I reckon he deserves it', they say, generously, of a player being paid over a million dollars for losing the final of a tennis tournament. 'If you ask me they earn every cent', they say of a football team who get eight million dollars a season between them.
The speaker might be a panel beater with three children, who has worked for 15 years at his trade, who has the respect and admiration of his workmates and neighbours, and the love of his wife and children, who has nearly paid off half their suburban house... Yet he watches excitedly as a professional golfer lines up a putt in a skins tournament that could add another $100,000 to the golfer's $28 million fortune. And the panel-beater really cares! It really matters to him that the golfer sinks the putt!
Why? Is he on a 10 per cent commission?
I don't think so.
This man seems to underestimate his own value.
In 1996 I published a book called This I Believe. Before I plug it here I'd better point out that the profits from the book go to the Save the Children Fund, so I'm not promoting it now to make money for myself. But I recommend This I Believe to you. It contains over 100 short essays, most of them by famous Australians, in which each person states the beliefs he or she holds. They range from radical to conservative, from religious to atheistic, from narrow to wide.
By browsing through a book like this you may get a clearer focus on your own beliefs.
After you've done that, try writing such a statement yourself.
Incidentally, the fact that you believe in something doesn't mean you're locked in for life. There's no virtue in having a closed mind. You should always be open to new ideas, prepared to rethink your position. That's proof that you're alive. 'I think, therefore I am', said a famous French philosopher.
In a men's toilet in a restaurant in Fitzroy, Melbourne, I saw this piece of graffiti: 'Opinions should be held as lightly as a leaf on a window sill: blown in any direction by the slightest puff of wind.'
Not your average graffiti. But I liked it, although it's worth noting that opinions and beliefs are two different things.
I suspect that one of the greatest enemies for human beings is cynicism. To be cynical is to believe in nothing, to think the worst of everyone, to be certain that everybody's trying to rip you off. There's no good in the world, everyone's just out for their own interests.
There is overwhelming evidence that the world's not like that, but cynical people don't want to know about it. Cynicism is like gastro: it goes through your whole system and makes you shitty.
You often get gastro because you haven't been clean yourself: you haven't washed your hands after going to the toilet. You get cynical because you haven't been trustworthy and honest and decent yourself. You think that because you're pretty grubby, the rest of the world must be equally grubby. It isn't
The opposite to cynicism is trust.
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