I must have been seven years old. My dad was helping me learn to ride a two-wheeler. He held the bike steady as I mounted and found the pedals. Then, holding the frame, he ran along behind as I cruised the sidewalk.
It felt good, I was doing this, but I was apprehensive. “Keep pedaling, keep pedaling, you’re doing great,” Dad said. Then he stopped speaking.
“How’m I doing?…. uh, Dad? …. Dad?” I looked over my shoulder. Dad, using the trick all fathers seem to use, had let go of the frame 30 feet back. I’d been riding all on my own.
Problem was, I didn’t believe it. I believed I was being supported. Belief and reality conflicted, belief won, I toppled onto a lawn.
As is so often – perhaps too often – the case, the truth is what we believe it to be.
In Sunday’s New York Times, historian Eric Foner wrote that January 1 was the 200th anniversary of the prohibition on the importation of slaves into the United States. Today’s news reports the New Jersey legislature is considering formally apologizing that the state ever allowed slavery. If it does, it will join the states of Alabama, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, which have enacted similar measures.
To us in the 21st century, either remembering the civil rights movement or having been taught about it in school, it seems odd that America ever allowed slavery and yet 200 years ago many, if not most, Americans believed that not only was slavery acceptable, but was biblically ordained. They cited the story of Noah’s sons and believed – and here belief is operative – that Ham, the son who offended Noah, was the father of the dark races and that early offense justified their actions thousands of years later.
In 1807, England abolished slavery on grounds of morality and reasons to believe began to shift in the so-called “civilized” world, just as the American Revolution 30 years earlier had shifted ideas about government. The action by the English strengthened beliefs already present in America (Vermont outlawed slavery in 1777) and 52 years later led to the war that ended slavery in this nation.
Today, we believe there’s no more slavery. Unless we use the Internet, because the same Google News search that brings us news of New Jersey’s pending legislation also carries a report by a German periodical estimating there are 27 million people held as slaves around the world today.
Like the old days, slaves are dark people, grabbed from their homes in the poorer regions of the Earth, where their families have no voices and no rights.
Many of the victims of modern slavery are held as household servants or construction workers in the Middle East. Recent stories have detailed the influx of such slaves into the oil-rich Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
We can believe we’re morally superior to those slave owners, unless we know that most chocolate and much soy is produced with slave labor.
The point here is not to make everyone feel bad. The point is my dad got me to ride my bike by convincing me to accept the fact that I had indeed ridden all by myself. Once the fact became the belief, the obstacle to riding a two-wheeler was removed.
If we choose, we can believe everything is OK as long as we get what we need and want or we can believe we have a role to play in making the world a better place than it is. While we can’t choose our facts, we can choose our beliefs and it’s belief that determines our actions. If those beliefs conform to facts, so much the better.
As we move through 2008 and the election process, let’s choose to believe we can, through actions large and small, make the world a better place.
The Power of Belief
I must have been seven years old. My dad was helping me learn to ride a two-wheeler. He held the bike steady as I mounted and found the pedals. Then, holding the frame, he ran along behind as I cruised the sidewalk.
It felt good, I was doing this, but I was apprehensive. “Keep pedaling, keep pedaling, you’re doing great,” Dad said. Then he stopped speaking.
“How’m I doing?…. uh, Dad? …. Dad?” I looked over my shoulder. Dad, using the trick all fathers seem to use, had let go of the frame 30 feet back. I’d been riding all on my own.
Problem was, I didn’t believe it. I believed I was being supported. Belief and reality conflicted, belief won, I toppled onto a lawn.
As is so often – perhaps too often – the case, the truth is what we believe it to be.
In Sunday’s New York Times, historian Eric Foner wrote that January 1 was the 200th anniversary of the prohibition on the importation of slaves into the United States. Today’s news reports the New Jersey legislature is considering formally apologizing that the state ever allowed slavery. If it does, it will join the states of Alabama, North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia, which have enacted similar measures.
To us in the 21st century, either remembering the civil rights movement or having been taught about it in school, it seems odd that America ever allowed slavery and yet 200 years ago many, if not most, Americans believed that not only was slavery acceptable, but was biblically ordained. They cited the story of Noah’s sons and believed – and here belief is operative – that Ham, the son who offended Noah, was the father of the dark races and that early offense justified their actions thousands of years later.
In 1807, England abolished slavery on grounds of morality and reasons to believe began to shift in the so-called “civilized” world, just as the American Revolution 30 years earlier had shifted ideas about government. The action by the English strengthened beliefs already present in America (Vermont outlawed slavery in 1777) and 52 years later led to the war that ended slavery in this nation.
Today, we believe there’s no more slavery. Unless we use the Internet, because the same Google News search that brings us news of New Jersey’s pending legislation also carries a report by a German periodical estimating there are 27 million people held as slaves around the world today.
Like the old days, slaves are dark people, grabbed from their homes in the poorer regions of the Earth, where their families have no voices and no rights.
Many of the victims of modern slavery are held as household servants or construction workers in the Middle East. Recent stories have detailed the influx of such slaves into the oil-rich Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
We can believe we’re morally superior to those slave owners, unless we know that most chocolate and much soy is produced with slave labor.
The point here is not to make everyone feel bad. The point is my dad got me to ride my bike by convincing me to accept the fact that I had indeed ridden all by myself. Once the fact became the belief, the obstacle to riding a two-wheeler was removed.
If we choose, we can believe everything is OK as long as we get what we need and want or we can believe we have a role to play in making the world a better place than it is. While we can’t choose our facts, we can choose our beliefs and it’s belief that determines our actions. If those beliefs conform to facts, so much the better.
As we move through 2008 and the election process, let’s choose to believe we can, through actions large and small, make the world a better place.
© Mark Floegel, 2008