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Our Assumptions of “The Real World”

We all walk around with assumptions deep within our minds about how the world is supposed to work. No one sat us down and told us this list. We absorbed it through everyday experiences and desires. They have created for us a set of expectations and when those expectations are violated we are angry and demand change. Sometimes these assumptions are good and right, sometimes the are fallacious.

One such assumption we have today is that if you are abiding by the law you should have nothing to fear from law enforcement. This is clearly not true especially for black men in America. It has never been true. This is why we are rightly outraged when a black man who has done nothing wrong is shot by the police. This should not happen. Law enforcement agrees, but it happens. It happens because of racism deep within our hearts and because it is in all of our hearts and because police and teachers and preachers and politicians are people it is in our hearts as well.

There are other assumptions within our hearts too.

• We believe that there are always second chances to fix something if we mess up and do wrong.
• We believe that it’s God’s job, after we mess up to make things right and it’s God’s job to give us what we want out of life. This is called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
• If you don’t believe in God you probably believe that it is society’s or the government’s job to deliver these things. We train police, teachers, politicians, doctors, lawyers to create a world for us where this is true. This is why we pay taxes. This is why we vote. This is what we want from the government. We believe that if we work hard enough that eventually this will happen. This is called “progress”. I would assert that this is every bit as much an article of faith as any religious belief. There is no scientific basis for such a belief. People simply believe it. Every time you hear someone refer to what year it is in exasperation about some unfulfilled article of their progressive faith they reaffirm it. It is a religion and right now a sort of civil religion.
• We believe that if someone means well then the errors that they make should be forgivable. It is all about the intention. The truth is that we hold this belief but we immediately turn around and deny it in the case of a shooting or some sort of consequential accident. The long haul truck driver that fell asleep behind the wheel and caused an accident that took sometimes life didn’t intend to kill anyone, but they and probably their corporation (refer back to government progress religion) will be held responsible for the death. Just not intending to harm doesn’t mean we are innocent of the harm we unintentionally cause. We recognize that there should be a distinction in punishment, but we don’t just wave away every act of unintended harm and say “it was nothing” when it was in fact something.
• We believe that good intentions go along with the innocence of the human spirit. We tend to believe that evil comes from the outside not the inside, that we are innocent by nature and we learn evil or are forced to it by institutions, by “bad people”, by other things outside ourselves.
• When people suffer bad things they often deserve it. This is the implicit word of karma. If you want to stay safe, have a good life, meet your goals, you need to do the right things and then everything will be well. Take care of your health. Believe the right things. Think the right thoughts. Figure out what is bad and what is good and do the good and all will be well.

All of this adds up to an implicit picture that we carry around of good and bad, right and wrong, and what we can expect out of life. If you believe in a God, or a higher power, or the goodness of “the universe” this picture is very much in play there as well.

Does this Fit? 

Take a look at this picture. Is it true?

• Genetics determines a lot of the health and medical success or failure we have.
• We might believe in this picture living at the time and place we do. Many others see the world very differently. We know this but resist it.
• When we look around the world our media filters tend to focus in on individual stories which we can identify with. This plays to our hearts. Last year Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian school girls. Social media lit up about this. The US government offered assistance. Have these girls been found? Have we simply forgotten? Watch how our short attention span distracts us to every passing crisis.
  • The San Bernadino shootings made us look to ISIS radicalization. We cry out to law enforcement to keep us safe!
  • The Pulse Shooting made us look at LGBTQ issues and ISIS. We cry out to law enforcement to keep us safe.
  • Two back to back shootings of black men by police officers and then 5 police officers dead by sniper fire while monitoring a peaceful march.
  • What will happen tomorrow? In the mean time we focus on presidential politics imagining it is the key. Wasn’t it supposed to be the key 4, 8 and 12 years go?

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