Faith and achievement

[bennyboy]

I'm going to argue that literally everything we do is faith-based, and that understanding this can be of great benefit to us.

First, though, let me define my terms.  I'm not defining "faith" as "believing in something for which there's no evidence."  I use it more in behavioral terms: "Believing that something will happen though you have no direct control over it."  Caveat: before I lube up for the ritualized ass-raping that anyone reading this far is already preparing for me, please let me ask you to read through to the end.


It occurred to me that I, a conscious agent, really don't know how my leg moves when I want it to move.  I intend it to move, and it does.  The same thing goes for remembering answers for a test-- I don't really DO anything at all, other than intend to remember and have it happen.

These are things that I do regularly.  However, there are also things which are special for me: sometimes, when I'm playing chess, I see things I wouldn't normally see.  I'm turbocharged, I'm "in the zone."  The same goes for playing piano.  I'm a competent amateur, and can play some pretty hard pieces, but SOMETIMES, once in a blue moon, I become brilliant-- the fingers fly 2x faster than normal, and I seem to feel almost every vibration of every note.

Why call it "faith?"  Because it always, I mean ALWAYS, involves letting go of the conscious control of the body and mind, and settling down only to the intent and a kind of meditative immersion in the music (or the game or whatever).  At these moments, I have faith that the mental powers that be will take over, and will produce the results I desire.

Here's the clincher.  I believe that Christians have an advantage in this regard, and that this explains why you so often see athletes thanking Jebus for letting them catch that tricky touchdown or for shaving .2 seconds off their 100m time or whatever.  They really do believe that what they want will be made manifest for them, and it turns out it is.

That it has nothing to do with Jesus, and very much to do with brain chemistry, doesn't matter to them-- they've found a way to suspend disbelief, and to access more fully the mental faculties which allow them to succeed.

I think anyone who wants to succeed in a skill-based or mind-based activity needs this kind of faith.  Without having evidence, we have to believe that there lies in us some hidden capacity, waiting to be revealed to ourselves and the world.  And we have to step out of the way to let the "powers that be," whether spiritual or just the wondrously complex workings of the human brain, take control over our actions.

Okay, I'm lubed up now, and ready for responses.

[Jesster]

I got to your definition and stopped. As soon as you can redefine something, we are no longer talking about the same thing. I know you want me to read to the end, but what's the point?

[Excited Penguin]

Whenever I get in the zone like that, I don't have faith. I actually know what's going to happen and how to prevent it/deal with it. That shit is real. I don't care how crazy it sounds. It fucking works.

If only I could master it, that would be something else.

[Excited Penguin]

I got to your definition and stopped. As soon as you can redefine something, we are no longer talking about the same thing.

Yepp, welcome to the benny boy language-shifting show.

I'm used to it by now, so I don't bitch about it. I just go along with it.

[bennyboy]

Whenever I get in the zone like that, I don't have faith. I actually know what's going to happen and how to prevent it/deal with it. That shit is real. I don't care how crazy it sounds. It fucking works.

If only I could master it, that would be something else.

Well, that's the thing, though.  When I'm in that zone, it seems like things could never be any other way.  I can't understand how that other bennboy was so dense as not to "get" what I'm getting at that moment. At that point, there's nothing to "master," and out of that point, getting back to it seems almost impossible.

Now that I'm older, I've had the zone experience quite a lot of times.  I know it's lurking in there, somewhere in my brain.  But how do I access it?  The answer is first knowing that it's "in there somewhere."  The second is to basically hope, to appeal to that part of my brain to wake the fuck up.  Then there's a lot of warmup (in the case of piano), of trying mental tricks to get me to that place.  There's a lot of waiting for that lightning bolt to strike again.

I'd say it's not unlike praying to your brain, to be honest, and believing that if you pray enough, it will reward you with that high-level experience you are hoping for.

[bennyboy]

I got to your definition and stopped. As soon as you can redefine something, we are no longer talking about the same thing. I know you want me to read to the end, but what's the point?

I'm not redefining it.  It's well within the parameters of the word "faith."  When a word has more than one meaning, or an ambiguous meaning, you have to say what you mean when you use it.

And what's this "we" stuff?  I'm talking about faith.  You aren't doing anything except joining my thread to say there's no point joining my thread.

But to answer your question: I think there's a convergence between my definition of faith and the more Christian religious one. I don't think it's a cultural accident that many great athletes are seen making the cross sign, for example. I think religious faith can suspend all the psychological impediments to achievement-- in other words, it has a great practical utility. Personally, I prefer to have faith in my great brain than in Jebus, but in the end, the real joy is in the results much more than the psychological method used to get them.

[Jesster]

I got to your definition and stopped. As soon as you can redefine something, we are no longer talking about the same thing. I know you want me to read to the end, but what's the point?

I'm not redefining it.  It's well within the parameters of the word "faith."  When a word has more than one meaning, or an ambiguous meaning, you have to say what you mean when you use it.

And what's this "we" stuff?  I'm talking about faith.  You aren't doing anything except joining my thread to say there's no point joining my thread.

I'll respond to the useful bits of that because the second bit isn't relevant.

What I see you doing is using trust and calling it faith. Everything you have described relies on people taking previous experiences that have been reliable in the past and trusting that they will work similarly in the future. Just because not all of it is entirely explained to them doesn't mean they are using faith.

If you want to equivocate trust and faith, then it's not possible for you and I to have a useful conversation. Faith may be a subset of trust, but that doesn't mean you get to use the wider definition.

[Excited Penguin]

Whenever I get in the zone like that, I don't have faith. I actually know what's going to happen and how to prevent it/deal with it. That shit is real. I don't care how crazy it sounds. It fucking works.

If only I could master it, that would be something else.

Well, that's the thing, though.  When I'm in that zone, it seems like things could never be any other way.  I can't understand how that other bennboy was so dense as not to "get" what I'm getting at that moment.  At that point, there's nothing to "master," and out of that point, getting back to it seems almost impossible.

Now that I'm older, I've had the zone experience quite a lot of times.  I know it's lurking in there, somewhere in my brain.  But how do I access it?  The answer is first knowing that it's "in there somewhere."  The second is to basically hope, to appeal to that part of my brain to wake the fuck up.  Then there's a lot of warmup (in the case of piano), of trying mental tricks to get me to that place.  There's a lot of waiting for that lightning bolt to strike again.

I'd say it's not unlike praying to your brain, to be honest, and believing that if you pray enough, it will reward you with that high-level experience you are hoping for.

I actually used to have a theory as a teenager that worship of Gods is, really, just worship of the self.

[Jesster]

I got to your definition and stopped. As soon as you can redefine something, we are no longer talking about the same thing. I know you want me to read to the end, but what's the point?

But to answer your question: I think there's a convergence between my definition of faith and the more Christian religious one.  I don't think it's a cultural accident that many great athletes are seen making the cross sign, for example.  I think religious faith can suspend all the psychological impediments to achievement-- in other words, it has a great practical utility.  Personally, I prefer to have faith in my great brain than in Jebus, but in the end, the real joy is in the results much more than the psychological method used to get them.

And now you are giving the placebo affect more credit than it is worth. Just because someone is able to calm themselves, doesn't mean that there is something special about their ritual. It means they are calm and they can focus more on the task at hand. There are non-ritualistic secular methods that have nothing to do with faith that achieve the same thing.

[Excited Penguin]

I'm not redefining it.  It's well within the parameters of the word "faith."  When a word has more than one meaning, or an ambiguous meaning, you have to say what you mean when you use it.

And what's this "we" stuff?  I'm talking about faith.  You aren't doing anything except joining my thread to say there's no point joining my thread.

I'll respond to the useful bits of that because the second bit isn't relevant.

What I see you doing is using trust and calling it faith. Everything you have described relies on people taking previous experiences that have been reliable in the past and trusting that they will work similarly in the future. Just because not all of it is entirely explained to them doesn't mean they are using faith.

If you want to equivocate trust and faith, then it's not possible for you and I to have a useful conversation. Faith may be a subset of trust, but that doesn't mean you get to use the wider definition.

I don't think you get it, and I think benny described it imperfectly. It's not really about trust. It's actually a sort of knowing. It's that moment when you do something, and then your mind starts giving you the answers in a weird way, it works extremely efficiently, you know exactly what and how to do it to achieve what you want in the moment.