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What compels some people to force their beliefs on others?
Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering`
There is nothing as unsure and unreliable than our own sense of self, except perhaps for another person’s concept of truth that they are keen on dictating to us in the hopes that we will accept it and honor it. The self, which is the person we take ourselves to be, is deluded enough to think that it has a reliable worldview and magical path to redemption and salvation. Quite ironic coming from a persona that doesn’t even know itself or the way it thinks.
Of all that we humans know, we know the least about ourselves.
The irresistible need to foist one’s religious, political, fitness, and you-name-it views and ideals speaks to the unstable and fearful self that seeks at all costs to be grounded and secure in an existence that is anything but stable. For far too many people, if others are not just like them they find it impossible to get along and be happy.
I’m not speaking of someone acting in a professional capacity, but rather the kind of person who is compelled to tell others what to do and believe.
The past, because it cannot be changed or surprise us, is the safest place to hide, which is why religion, above all else, is so appealing to people who are fearful of the present and the future. A dead and admired sage is better than one standing right in front of us telling the truth without asking us to accept it without our own insight.
When we speak of the self and its motives we are speaking primarily of fear — the fear of the self as it tries to exist in what is perceived to be a hostile, confusing, threatening, unpredictable life. We know that there is a lot of fear, because there are billions of religious people as living proof.
While fear of the unknown is commonly accepted as a worldview shared by nearly everyone, it seems to me that fear is actually the result of the known.
What we think we know is what we have learned over our lives from secondhand information, experts, institutions, and authority figures — all of which has created fear in us and out in the world. If we knew nothing then we…
