Comfort Beliefs
Hakann trough A. S.
Posted on May 3 , 2024
My dearest brothers and sisters,
This is Hakann speaking. I greet you in peace and love.
In our culture, teenagers become adults when they reach a certain level of consciousness and awareness and maturity, and not when they have existed for eighteen years.
From my perspective, some Earth humans may have adult bodies, but I personally don’t think they are very adult. I am not arguing that you should take certain people’s rights away, or treat people condescendingly. But I am saying that it’s useful to keep in mind that just because someone has the body of an adult, doesn’t necessarily mean that they have the consciousness and awareness that you would expect an adult to have.
For example, many people assume that anyone who has the body of an adult, is a logical person who arrives at their beliefs through facts and reason. In reality, most people on Earth right now believe whatever is most psychologically comfortable. Part of that can be seen as immaturity. Or part of that can be seen as possibly-adult people being so squeezed and overburdened that they’re looking for psychologically comforting beliefs.
Some people look for comfort not because there’s anything fundamentally wrong with them, but just because they are getting squeezed right now. Or they might have had a tough childhood, but perhaps they can still heal and become more adult later in life, in our sense of the word.
So, it’s understandable that a lot of people are adopting what you might think of as comfort beliefs, which are beliefs that aren’t exactly logical or compassionate but that are comfortable for the person himself or herself to have.
What’s unfortunate is that right now, both the left and the right have comfort beliefs that make the other side feel less safe. And one side having an out-of-alignment comfort belief, actually strengthens the out-of-alignment comfort beliefs on the other side.
It’s a vicious circle: both sides have comfort beliefs that drive the other side to ever more tightly embrace their own comfort beliefs.
For example, someone on the right may have the out of alignment comfort belief: “the reason I have a pretty good life is because I am virtuous and worked hard and made smart choices. No one helped me out, I did it all on my own. Anyone who doesn’t have a good life is either immoral or lazy or made bad choices, and they deserve what they get. If someone is struggling, they should just stop making bad choices and work hard, and that will fix it.”
Now, there are some good parts of this belief. Personal responsibility is very important. And sure, making good choices and working hard can absolutely help someone build a better life. Frankly, a more moderate version of this belief would just be a good belief to have.
But the somewhat extreme version of the belief that I just shared is overly simplistic and self-serving and a bit callous. Not everyone who is struggling can solve their problems just by working harder.
If someone on the right expresses this belief, it can easily make someone on the left feel bad and unsafe, and for understandable reasons. It’s entirely possible that this struggling left-winger didn’t have as much financial support from their family, or is struggling with a health issue that the right-winger doesn’t have, et cetera.
Even if the right-winger doesn’t have something that’s easy to point to as a concrete advantage, the right-winger might just have been born with a higher IQ than average, which is actually a huge inborn advantage in itself. Or the right-winger might have been born into a stable and functional and loving family, which is another huge advantage that not everyone enjoys. If you were born with an above-average IQ into a stable family, then it’s easy to think of yourself as having had an average start, but in reality you were luckier than most.
Also, older people often don’t understand that the younger generations genuinely have it much harder in some ways.
Now it’s easy to say that the left-winger should just take personal responsibility — and in some cases, that is exactly what the left-winger should do. Personal responsibility is important.
However it’s also understandable that if some struggling left-winger sees a successful right-winger express that out-of-alignment comfort belief, that the left-winger will feel psychologically drawn to finding some reason why the right-winger didn’t actually work harder, the right-winger was just privileged. Maybe the right-winger has male privilege. Or white privilege. Or some other kind of privilege.
So this occasional right-wing comfort belief of “I’m successful purely because I worked hard, if you’re struggling then you can solve that by working harder” is actually nudging the left to embrace their own comfort beliefs. Namely: “I can’t succeed, because I don’t have male privilege. Men are so much more privileged than women. I’m a victim. I can’t build the life that I want, I’m dependent on the government to get involved and help me. Rich people are always leeches and always oppressors and are always evil extractors of value.”
But in turn, it is also understandable that if the left expresses these comfort beliefs, that people on the right will be further nudged into adopting their comfort belief. Namely: there are plenty of people on the right who didn’t have an unfair advantage, they just genuinely worked hard and contributed significantly to the real economy. And if you tell these people that they’re just evil privileged rich dudes, then you’re actually pushing them into the right-wing comfort belief we expressed earlier, of “screw you, if you’re struggling then that’s your fault and you can solve your problems by working harder.”
This is not a crazy reaction, because indeed, some people genuinely just need to take personal responsibility and work harder. But then again, if you formulate it in such an extreme way, then you’re further driving the left into their own comfort beliefs — because clearly some people can’t solve their own problems by working harder, and clearly some people actually are more privileged than others.
Other than listening to each other, what would also help is if people adopted more reasonable and more nuanced and more moderate forms of these comfort beliefs. Because it genuinely is fine to believe that hard work and personal responsibility is important — it’s just good to also be aware that some people were born into a worse situation than you were, and not everyone can solve their problems through working harder.
Similarly for the left: yes, some people genuinely were born into more privilege than you were. But that doesn’t mean that you are a helpless victim who can’t improve your own life. It also doesn’t mean that every white person or every man is automatically more privileged than you — some white people and some men were born into even tougher situations than you were. And not every rich person is automatically evil or a leech or an oppressor.
Also, even if you’re left-wing or right-wing, that doesn’t mean that you should buy into the entire package of left-wing or right-wing ideas without thinking. Try to think for yourself. Neither the left nor the right is completely correct and fair and without flaws — which is why there’s such a fierce political war in the first place.
In fact, adopting the position that your side is completely right, and becoming a political crusader with that mindset, could be seen as a comfort belief in itself. After all, that too is a somewhat out of alignment position that is nevertheless egoically pleasing and it gets you appreciation from other political crusaders in your camp.
And finally, it’s good to do your own inner work, so that you don’t feel the need as much to adopt beliefs just because they are psychologically pleasing. Although most people receiving this message are already doing significantly more inner work than the average person on Earth is. So, great job.
I very much respect that you are continuing to develop yourself and do your inner work even though Earth is so very challenging right now. You’re doing great.
I love you, and I wish you a very good week.
