I'd Rather Fight Than Switch!

Remember the old cigarette ads showing smokers with black eyes who defiantly proclaim,"I'd rather fight than switch!" (brands)? This puts me in mind of entrenched behavior patterns that are painful, self-destructive and in clear need of elimination. Why do we cling to the hurtful? Why, when all reason calls out to abandon a foolish behavior, do we continue to stick our hands in the fire?

The answer is because the behavior--and more accurately the beliefs that support it--would rather fight than switch.

A particular belief is what I call a "thought-form." It is a discrete entity that is bound by universal law to survive.
I define "survival" as the effort of a form to maintain its existent structural integrity. The universe is comprised of surviving physical and non-physical forms. Survival is the attempt to keep a form intact. Change is equated with death of the existent: once something changes, it ceases to be what it was.

Perpetual change rules the physical universe; no physical form can remain unaltered from one unit of time to the next. Thought-forms, on the other hand, have no physical mass and thus are immune to the interactional forces of change. A belief, "Jesus is coming soon," can remain unaltered for a lifetime in the mind of the believer; it can, and in this case has been, passed down from generation to generation.

A thought-form survives with all the ferocity of a cornered rat. It resists any introspection that can change it. The only threat to a belief comes from the person who believes it. It is a parasite-host relationship. The belief "Blacks are inferior to whites" need only keep its host believer convinced that it is true in order to remain unchanged; to "survive."

This is why we dislike people who challenge our beliefs. It is also why "all beliefs are equally valid" is so dangerous: there is no base-line, no standard that separates the wheat of objective fact from the chaff of subjective nonsense. One prays that the mechanic working on a jet engine would not hold such an easy-going philosophy.

Every belief would rather fight to the death than switch. This is why it's hard to change.