Where do our beliefs come from? To begin with,
during childhood, our belief system is likely to be based on the belief systems
of our parents, after all, they seem to manage to exist in the big wide world
following those beliefs, they must have some idea of what they are doing,
surely? This idea that we need to look to others to form our beliefs,
particularly in early life, is reinforced by the fact that children, as a rule,
are not really listened to or believed as often as they should be. Any beliefs
I held as a child were considered, by the adult population for the most part,
to be naive or fantastical. I think this is because children are not really
considered reliable sources of information, because any real beliefs, from an
adult perspective, must surely be learned through years of arduous trial and
error. That idea is, I reckon, a half-truth. The beliefs we have developed as
adults tend to go through a process of change and renewal as we experience more
and they are put to the test, time and again. But we must not forget that
children view the world in a far more honest manner, they tend to call things
as they see them. That is something we train ourselves out of as we mature, for
the sake of other people's feelings or differing perspectives. This is not
necessarily a bad thing, but it could serve to remind us that children should
be listened to. Their perspectives are not necessarily wrong, but without the
prejudice of years under their belts.
