How much of people’s behavior is a result of their beliefs and how much is it a result of their character?
What bears greater influence on their actions?
In Nazi Germany, everyone was acting like a complete jerk. It is unlikely that everyone living there at the time was born evil. They were practicing wrong beliefs. Once they no longer practiced these beliefs, they became quite good people and built a beautiful, peaceful, prosperous country that has done a lot for the world. I have known people with the best personal qualities act in ugly manner when they had wrong beliefs. So clearly belief has a strong influence on one’s action.
But so does character. I have known people whose beliefs I found abhorrent, who impressed me as good human beings. I knew people in New Age who thought that everything that happened to people was a reflection of what’s in their consciousness. I find that belief abhorrent as it would justify any crime under the sun under the claim that the person has brought it about. But I have respect for these people’s character.
So we have some people encouraging others to examine their beliefs. That is a valid direction to take, and one that I support. What I do not support is replacing wrong beliefs with worse beliefs. If the belief of your upbringing is Christianity and the other person wants to replace it with Wahabism, that is not an improvement in the character of your consciousness. Sometimes beliefs are replaced by better beliefs; sometimes by worse ones.
The baby boom generation has gone through a lot of permutation both in their beliefs and their character. They started out fighting for all sorts of causes that did not bring them reward; they ended up adopting creeds that saw engagement with the world as forcing one’s will on the world or as being negative. I want to tell these people that they were right the first time around. There are many things that need to be done and many problems that need to be fixed. Focusing solely on one’s own spiritual growth denies the world what one has to give and leaves problems without the attention of people who have the discernment to see them.
Is it valid to pursue spiritual growth? That depends on what is meant by spiritual growth. Taliban think that they pursue spiritual growth as well. If you go from being engaged and concerned to being short-sighted and careless, then you have not gotten better, you have gotten worse.
Is it, at the same time, valid to examine one’s character? I certainly think so. It is valid to correct whatever is wrong with your character with something better. However many paradigms by which people examine their character are incorrect. For example, the character of the innovator, or the lover, or the leader, is claimed to be narcissistic. If such things are narcissism, then we owe to narcissism most of what we have.
So we have in Christianity people with both good and bad characters. Same in Buddhism; same in Communism; same in just about anything else. How much of their actions is function of their beliefs and how much of their character? I would say that they are a function of both. No Christian would approve of idolatry. But there are some Christians who are good to their wives and others who are ugly to them.
Socrates said that a life unexamined is not worth living. What does one examine, really, when one examines one’s life? One examines one’s action. Then one finds out what his actions are product of. Then, should the actions be found to be wrong, he fixes whatever happens to be the source of the actions, whether it be belief or character.
It is therefore valid to examine both character and belief. When one does that, the unconscious becomes conscious and becomes one’s own. And that can be a source of both benefit and wisdom, making it possible to correct wrong both internally produced and externally implanted.