What makes me believe one thing more than another? Abundance Tribe QOTW

This is my response to Abundance Tribe's latest question of the week.

This is something of a free write - I just let it flow, then went back over it and made minor edits.

I find free writing answers to these questions to be most 'informative' - answers tend to end up in unexpected places.

My belief in off-gridding as the way forwards

If it's a matter of 'believing' which is the most efficient way for me personally to achieve a particular goal I'll dig around and do some research - possibly spending months (depending on the project) - and I tend to rely on a combination of case studies and statistical analysis, I find both are necessary.

This is why I've hit on Permculaturing as the next phase of my life - statistically, buying land in Portugal and living off grid is several times more cost efficient for me than staying in the UK - I believe the maths, it's just numbers!

But there's also case studies - people doing what I'm planning on doing just seem to be a lot happier, a lot more dynamic, and a lot more human, compared to a dull chained-life led around by the man in the system.

My belief in Crypto

When it comes to Crypto, I put my belief in the fundamentals of the token - hence why I've historically mainly invested in Hive - because i can see so many use cases, I've stacked this more than any other coin.

However with the Steem PD I 'hedged' into BTC and ETH and now I hold a lot more of those - mainly BTC because I believe that the one fundamental 'truth' of the decreasing print rate should result in the value increasing over time, even with all the short term speculative pumps and dumps.

I don't think my belief in Hive is objective - it's subjective, it's a platform that suits me, but it also suits a whole load of other oddballs, many of whom are like me, but many of whom are not, so what I've got here is a kind of diverse inter-subjective test that my 'belief in the growth potential of Hive' is sound.

Even if Hive doesn't grow in value I still 'believe' in the principles of decentralisation and freedom from censorship.

I might ask myself why I believe in these? Well I guess that's down to the historical record of the negative consequences of the opposite - Fascisms and State-Communisms - but my belief in the

My belief in Da Buddha

In terms of my 'spiritual beliefs' - basically Buddhism, there's a lot to it, and there's not a lot to it.

I've read a lot on the Noble Eightfold Path, meditated a lot, and I just kind of KNOW that Buddhist ontology and epistemology are 'true'.

I'm broadly encouraged in this 'faith' by the Buddha - he was just a bloke, who tried a lot of spiritual things, got nowhere, then just sat there for 60 days until he broke through to Enlightenment, which is nothing special. Nice huh! I mean, there's something I can get on board with!

And the Buddhist texts tell you to subject everything to critical inquiry, if you want to, which I have done, and found the teachings, unlike life, to be quite satisfactory.

Having said that, I realise that this belief in Buddhism is just a temporary, in the mean-time thing, and that there is a state of existence that is beyond belief itself.

Or at least I Believe there is.