Whether we are religious or not in the traditional sense beliefs matter. They underpin everything we do and say, and can facilitate or be a barrier to collaboration projects large and small. Most religions, ideologies and other belief systems haven't been designed to be collaborative, in fact it is nearly the opposite - many doctrines seek to invalidate or defeat other doctrines, and many wars and terrible violence has too often been the result.
*Can we collaborate on our beliefs?
*Will collaboration on beliefs help to build mutual understanding?
*Do underlying beliefs tend to disrupt attempts as collaboration in workplaces and social institutions?
Kartik Ariyur points out how in the age of mass collaboration it is necessary to discuss the implications of what we believe. Unless you do that belief systems will just remain the invisible elephant in the room, which everyone has to navigate around while wondering why the collaboration isn't working.
Problem: How do you discuss something when you don't even have a common vocuabulary?
One reason for the inherent clash of ideas is the lack of common vocabulary - most of the words in play have different meanings in different belief systems so communication, let alone collaboration is difficult. Science tries to get around this language problem by using common objective definitions. What is time for example? Scientists say that ''one second'' (in any language) is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation corresponding to the atomic vibrations the caesium-133 atom. Religions and ideologies usually don't seek objective references, in fact the core of many ideologies is creating new words or new meanings for existing words. like most aspects of culture, generally doesn't, because true objectivity is hard to come by. Defining faith is not easy.
Defined or not, beliefs have consequences; even if they happen to be untestable, as history has shown repeatedly in crusuades, Jihads, pogroms, purges, and institutionalized persecution of different kinds.
Kartik recommends a simple to say but hard to do solution to this problem: separate metaphysics from the morality
There are two aspects to any belief system
Morality: - how to behave (including how to think)
Metaphysics - the why we must behave so.
Morality, and moral principles, can be thought of as outward or exoteric aspects of belief. They are the actionables that follow from our belief in a higher being or subscription to a world view.
The metaphysics or personal philosopy that defines the "WHY" is the part of our belief system that is generally very difficult to talk about, compare, or discuss. These personal first principles can be called esoteric or inward beliefs. You can't really criticise someone for these beliefs, it is just a matter of subjectivity.
If we make this kind of separation, collaboration becomes possible. The esoteric, or non-debatable aspects of religion can be left for personal exploration while the outward aspects can be subject to public discussion.
Exoteric aspects of religions can be very similar - there does seem to be common elements of morality, though the differing metaphysics can result in entirely different moral choices by individuals following different religions.
Page Last Updated: Sep 21 10:26am by mlpilling