Wanting to Want and Liking to Believe
We’ve all wanted things, wanted to be things, wanted to have things. However, there are certain situations where some people actually “want to want” something.
The prime example of this is wanting to want the opposite sex. Many people are afraid of the possibility of being homosexual. In almost every other situation, you decide what you want by your feelings. In this situation, though, people sometimes don’t use their feelings to decide what they want. They base it instead on what they “want to want”. Even if a man is attracted to men, he may date a woman because he wants to be attracted to women.
Can you think of any other situation where this happens? It’s pretty silly actually. You wouldn’t eat chicken instead of steak because you want to be in the mood for chicken, even though you’re really in the mood for steak. Of course, this situation is unique because of the negative view on homosexuality in society. If there was no stigma attached, there would be no reason to “want to want”.
The other thing people tend to do is “like to believe”.
The example here is religion. This term is thrown around constantly with religion. If you ask a religious person what happens when they die, or if a god exists, they start their sentence with “well I like to believe” the majoirty of the time.
You’ll often hear things like “Well I like to believe that when you die, you go to heaven and you see all your family members that have passed” or “I like to believe that God watches down on all of us and listens to my prayers and has a plan for us all” or “I like to believe that everything happens for a reason”.
But when else would this line work? In every other situation, you believe the thing with the most evidence. You wouldn’t say “I like to believe my bank account has a trillion dollars in it” or “I like to believe that I have eight arms” because it’s far fetched and there’s no proof of it. If someone said any of these things to you, you would laugh at them and think they were crazy. If they said they like to believe their god has a trillion dollars and eight arms though, you would smile and nod, and “respect their belief”.
Let’s be a little bit more consistent as a society. Let’s want what we want and believe that which has the most evidence. Oh yeah, and if anyone tells you they like to believe something that’s crazy, let’s stop pretending they’re not crazy. Religion isn’t an excuse, crazy is crazy.
3 years ago