What is a system of beliefs? Is a system of beliefs something that works together like normal systems or would it have contradictions at every turn where one belief doesn't seem to 'fit' when compared to another within the same system? Well, as far as I have been able to work out, it appears that there are independent structures of 'beliefs' as opposed to one unifying web. To use an analogy, it could be thought of like a city landscape where some beliefs are massively tall skyscrapers and other beliefs either build up the skyscrapers window by window or remain small mom and pop one story shoe stores or gas stations. Some people have a full metropolitan area full of dozens and dozens of skyscrapers, shopping centers, and hundreds of smaller shops and restaurants, while other people who prefer a more simplistic sort of life maybe have a smaller farm town in the country side. Some people have the traditional form where the city has a concentration of skyscrapers in one particular area while other people have a much more interdisciplinary city where there may be two or three skyscrapers but there aren't any buildings under 8 stories. There could also be a much more shotgun feel to the city where there are a bunch of skyscrapers, but none of them are concentrated in one area and all of them are surrounded by much smaller buildings. Some people have a much more organized city where it seems like there is a smooth flow of traffic throughout the city with wide four lane roads, and some cities are as disorganized and haphazardly put together as Rome.
The building materials (facts) that eventually become the skyscrapers and buildings (beliefs) which are built and designed by the engineers (values) using tools and machines (concepts) makes up the city (belief system) that houses and meets the needs of the individual people and consumers (emotions).
Some building materials are more abundant than others and some of the machines used are more capable than others, some engineers can design more efficient and more attractive structures than others and some skyscrapers are more useful in their function than others. Sometimes, if a city hasn't been built in a particularly efficient fashion, such as Rome, in order to update and remodel an old and falling apart structure it might be necessary to have to remodel (or even demolish) some of the city in order for the proper machinery to be implemented. Jumping out of the analogy for a second in order to keep this in perspective and to just remind people, some concepts are much larger than others such as 'Capitalism', while other concepts like 'cooking' for example, are much much smaller (can fit in the narrow haphazardly built streets). Some designs (values) are flexible enough to where additions could be made (new beliefs) to structures, sorta like a lego building where the roof is made of more slots for more parts, while some less flexible designs were implemented that make future updates or additions much much more difficult.
The Value System (department of engineers) is structured more like the unifying web with core assumptions (senior executive staff of engineers) building up the center of the web with more idealistic and ambitious values located off of the center building links with one another in different directions and expanding outwards with the increase of reflection and complexity (new, creative, or experimental engineers). As scenarios that were unforeseen or unprepared for present themselves (problems navigating the city or certain building materials failing), the more idealistic or vulnerable values are either proven to be adequate, re-evaluated or left behind. It rarely occurs that there is a significant enough challenge to the core value system and emotional state that there is a full system re-evaluation (the population rioting and ripping apart their homes until a new team of engineers tackles the problems that the old team could not handle).
The senior executive staff of engineers (core Values) is made up of several departments that are absolutely vital to the construction, maintenance and everyday function of the city. First there is the building materials department who decides what is usable and what is not usable in construction (what Facts are and what Facts are not). Next would be industrial equipment department who decides which machines are relevant for a particular job site and which machines are not relevant (which concepts are relevant to building up beliefs and which ones aren't). Next would be the labor engineering department which oversee's the actual construction of a building (the arguments a person makes to try to convince others of the validity of a belief). Finally the engineering design department where the structure of the system is analysed and drawn up for individual buildings one at a time to serve the cities inhabitants which includes a fluid integration with all of the other buildings (the personal analysis someone does in private to try to make a model of reality). Each of these ideas (different departments) deserves their own blog entry so I will end here, I hope you enjoyed my colorful analogy and can have fun creating your own internal image :-)
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