How to Believe In Your Best Possible Outcome
The world is nuts, so you may as well...
"The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."
-John Steinbeck
I’ve decided to update Pascal’s Wager for the modern age.
If you’re unfamiliar with this dusty old philosophical concept, it essentially states that you might as well believe in God, because if you do, you’ll go to heaven, but if you don’t, you’ll go to hell.
Essentially, you have nothing to lose by believing in God.
Obviously, it’s imperfect. You have tons to lose if you’re following strict Christian dogma.
What if you abstain from all the delicious sins, like pre-marital sex and (according to certain Baptists) dancing, hoping it gets you into heaven, then get to the end of your life and find out heaven’s not real?
That’s why this shi*t needs to be updated.
I propose a new concept. Because I’m a (recovering) egotistical maniac, we’ll go ahead and call it Aaron’s wager.
Here it is in a nutshell:
I may as well believe in the set of beliefs that bring me and those I love the greatest joy, wealth, and health. I have nothing to lose by believing these, and everything to gain by defending them against pessimism, nihilism, and cynicism.
I’ve been to thirty countries and met more than 10,000 people from 100+ countries in the last decade.
Let me tell you, people believe the craziest things imaginable, and they’re not more logical coming from one country vs. any other. The grass ain’t greener.
The earth is flat.
Spirits live in my house, gnomes inhabit the woods out back.
The one political candidate I believe in is going to change the entire system made up of thousands of politicians.
The moon landing was fake.
Q (of QANON) is going to cleanse the country of sinners.
Reality is a construct, we live in a giant computer simulation.
I am the second coming of Jesus Christ.
The only way to truly release stored trauma is by screaming in public.
I’ve heard people declare all of the above with complete conviction. There are plenty of surveys to back these things up, too. According to Statista:
“About four in ten Americans believe in ghosts. According to a survey conducted in 2021, 36 percent of respondents from the United States said that they believed in ghosts. Women are more likely to believe in ghosts, but men generally believe more in UFOs.”
Let’s break this down
Let’s go ahead and put right and wrong aside for a second and focus on the what and the how.
We’ve been using an enlightenment frame of thinking for a few hundred years now. Ever since we discovered the scientific method, we’ve been trying to science the spiritual right out of our lives.
For the last two decades, there have been movements like New Atheism that have tried to persuade us that everything is describable and logical and that we need not believe in the divine.
And yet churches convert believers every day. People persist in believing that aliens walk among us and that they themselves can do magic with their psychic powers.
Why? Two reasons.
Human beings aren’t logical
Life without the mysterious and mystical is no damn fun.
If you remove the mystical from one place in a human being’s life, they’ll just insert it in another.
You’ve taken away my belief in UFOs? Fine! I believe in soulmates now.
There’s no point arguing. People want to believe in whatever they want, and no matter how much science and logic you try to slop onto them, they will.
Belief in the mysterious is ingrained in us. As human beings, we believe things to make meaning of the world. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years.
We are story-making machines.
“Right” and “wrong” are the wrong questions when talking about beliefs.
Do these beliefs create more joy, happiness, abundance, etc, in my life?
That’s the right question.
That’s the question a modern mythmaker asks.
Better beliefs, better life
If you want to live the happiest, most interesting, fulfilled, and abundant life possible, as I do, your beliefs need to go through the wringer.
Does a belief that you hold help you towards the life you ultimately want? No? Get rid of it!
Do you want more purpose in your life?
Well, that cynical belief that the world is f*cked and that the problems are too big for you to do anything about probably isn’t going to help you, is it? Try deleting the news app from your phone and volunteering at a local soup kitchen.
New belief: “I am the kind of person who makes a difference in my community.”Do you want to get in shape?
Well, that belief that you ‘deserve’ chips and four hours of TV every evening to ‘unwind’ isn’t going to help you, is it? Unplug the TV, give the remote to a trusted neighbor for a week, finish the snacks you have, don’t bring more into your house, and you’ll start naturally waking up earlier. May as well move in that unfilled morning time, right?
New belief: I am the kind of person who gets up early and exercises.
Obviously, just believing something positive doesn’t make it true. But it moves you in the right direction.
Every belief is delusional in the beginning. “I am a painter” is nonsense unless you paint.
But as you start painting, you build evidence that you are indeed a painter.
Here are my delusional beliefs:
I believe that anyone, no matter how far gone they are, can get better (the ‘perfectability of man’ that Steinbeck mentions in his quote above).
I believe that I can live in wealth, abundance, and joy and help those I love achieve the same.
If I didn’t believe both of these, I’d go crazy. The world is pretty absurd.
But despite all the facts you throw at me and any negative stories you tell me, I’ll go on believing these two things.
I’ll defend them to the death.
Because every day, with every action I take, I’m building more and more evidence to back them up.