How To Understand Yourself (And Others) More Deeply
Connect Your Beliefs And Deepen Your Micro-Philosophy
One of the hardest things that a human being can do is to criticize their own beliefs.
I am not talking about putting yourself down, or "judging" yourself.
That is not only incredibly easy, but incredibly common.
I am talking about critically evaluating what you believe and deciding whether the way you have been thinking is correct or not.
Why is this so difficult?
There are a lot of reasons, but I think these 2 are the most important to understand:
Reason #1: Most people identify so closely with their beliefs that to question them is to confront the terrifying prospect that they are nothing, or no one, without them.
This is a common experience that many athletes face when they retire from competition. In order to reach elite levels of athletic competition, you often have to become so unified with your identity as a competitive athlete that, when the activity is removed, you feel like there is no "you" beyond outside of it.
Reason #2: The fear of being perceived as indecisive or a hypocrite prevents us from being open to radical change.
Ideas matter.
Your survival depends on fitting into social groups. If you don't think like those around you, or change too quickly, or too often, there are usually negative consequences.
Paradoxically, even though most people identify closely with a set of beliefs, it is also true that most people don't fully understand their own beliefs.
The explanation for this is the same.
If we are afraid of changing our minds, or being perceived as a hypocrite in the eyes of others, then we will fail to question our beliefs.
If we are too attached to our beliefs that we don't question them, then we will fail to fully understand them.
In order to deepen your understanding of what you believe, you must be willing to look underneath of it and see what is there.
One of the main benefits of a micro-philosophy is that helps you pin down what you think so that you can hold it up for exploration and evaluation.
When we attach ourselves too closely to certain identities or stories that we tell ourselves, we lack a certain distance from our own thoughts.
But, by naming things and making them explicit, we are better able to turn them into objects of consideration.
There is a significant difference between a framed work of art that is hanging in a museum to be observed, studied, and appreciated, and the idea for a work of art that is living inside the artist's head.
Very rarely does the idea in the artist's head stay exactly the same when brought into existence.
You need to externalize your thoughts.
The best way to do this is to write them down.
Getting your thoughts under control allows you to look at them from a distance.
It creates a mental space between you are your thoughts.
Developing the ability to adopt a third-personal point of view on your own mind is absolutely crucial to becoming a free thinker.
This requires training, practice, and time.
It also requires breaking out of the habit of only using this ability on other people's ideas.
We have this ability, but we need to learn how to use it on ourselves from time to time.
By doing so, you unlock a radical freedom to create who you are.
For most of our lives, we must simply just be ourselves.
In order to get on with the business of life, we have to live as ourselves and see the world from the internal point of view of who we are.
But this doesn't mean that we always have to think as ourselves.
A Self-reflective person sets aside time to suspend who they are and reflect.
It is like pressing pause on a movie or show.
But in this case, the movie is the movie of your life.
The American philosopher Thomas Nagel argued that human beings have the unique ability in the animal kingdom to step back from their immediate subjective perspective and reflect on their own thoughts, experiences, and sense of self.
Nagel argues that this capacity for self-transcendence allows us to adopt an increasingly objective view of reality.
But we must use it carefully.
Adopting this detached viewpoint can not only lead to philosophical insight, it can also lead to existential unease or crisis.
Instead of treating who you currently are as the only perspective from which the world can be judged, you can occasionally use this "backwards step" or reflective faculty of our minds to observe yourself in the same way you observe others.
An artist sometimes needs to step away from a work to see it with fresh eyes.
By stepping away from the work of art which is your life, you are able to see yourself with fresh eyes.
You are able to see all the ways in which it is possible for you to redefine yourself.
Some people do not think this is possible.
I am sympathetic to the idea that there are limits to this.
For example, I do not think it is possible for us to ever fully step outside of ourselves in a way that is completely detached from our position in the history of the world.
I also think that the further away we try to go, the more difficult it becomes.
But if it was not possible at all, then it would be impossible for us to change.
And it is one of my core beliefs that human beings are capable of change.
Our thoughts and beliefs are not fully pre-determined and inflexible.
One of the main benefits of developing your own micro-philosophy is that it makes it much easier for you to understand your own beliefs and study yourself.
This is important not only for self-knowledge, but also for understanding other people and the world around you on a deeper level.
This is why I had you identify your core beliefs last week.
Instead of starting this journey by considering other people's ideas, your micro-philosophy builds outwards from within.
This gives you a perspective from which you can question yourself and the world around you.
By understanding yourself in an open-minded and critical way, you will also be able to better understand others, and the world at large.
In last week's newsletter, I taught you how to identify your core beliefs and construct a Core Belief Statement.
This week, I am going to teach you how to go even further on this journey and connect these core beliefs to fringe beliefs.
This is the final step you need to take to find and articulate your Atomic Beliefs.
In future newsletters, I will teach you how to take these atomic beliefs and build version 1.0 of your micro-philosophy.
Let's get started.
The Structure Of Atomic Beliefs: Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons
It is now possible to offer a comprehensive overview of the structure of atomic beliefs.
Atomic beliefs are the fundamental building blocks of your micro-philosophy, but even atoms have parts.
An atomic belief is composed of a core belief and one or more fringe beliefs.
Likewise, every atom has a core (nucleus) that is surrounded by a fringe (a cloud of electrons).
A core belief is a fundamental conviction or assumption that serves as the foundation for an individual’s worldview, values, and decisions. It is deeply held, often influences other beliefs, and is central to a person’s sense of identity and understanding of the world.
Core beliefs are composed of two parts:
A Positive Belief: A statement that asserts a positive claim about the nature of reality, knowledge, value, or morality.
A Definition: A statement that clarifies how you understand the meaning of key terms in your positive belief statement.
The positive belief represents the proton of a nucleus, while the definition represents the neutron.
A positive belief is a statement that asserts a positive claim about the nature of reality, knowledge, value, or morality.
What does it mean to "assert a positive claim"?
Very simply, this means to say that the world is a certain way, rather than to say how it is not.
In other words, positive beliefs are belief statements about what you think is actually true.
Like the proton, a positive belief has a positive charge or valence.
Definitions
In order to clearly understand what a positive belief is saying, it also needs a supporting definition.
What is a definition?
This is actually one of the deepest and most difficult philosophical questions to answer, but for the purpose of building a micro-philosophy, a simple answer will suffice.
In the context of your micro-philosophy and atomic beliefs, definitions are best thought of as neutrons, meaning they have no electrical charge.
Why?
Within the atom, a neutron provides stability, but does not itself carry charge.
Likewise, definitions provide stability to your ideas and beliefs by clarifying their meaning.
Unclear ideas are unstable and can be taken mean many different things.
It is important to understand that definitions do not make a positive assertion about the world beyond stating a fact about what you mean by certain words.
It is also important to understand that definitions do not deny anything either.
This is what makes them neutral.
A definition, as we are understanding it, cannot be true or false.
For example, if I say to you "when I use the word 'dog' I mean cat", you can't say to me in turn, "your definition is false. Because the word 'dog' doesn't refer to cats".
The reason why you can't say this is that I am telling you what I am using the word to mean, and I can't be wrong about that.
This is not the same thing as saying that a dog is a cat in reality.
Instead, it is saying something about how I am using the word 'dog'.
Definitions also serve a stabilizing role by not only helping us interpret and understand our beliefs, but also by helping us organize and connect them to other beliefs.
They can be thought of as the glue that binds together our concepts.
This helps us make sure that we use words in consistent ways so that our beliefs are logically consistent with one another.
Definitions also help other people understand what we think.
Without clear definitions, two people might be using terms in completely different ways and not even realize it.
This leads to a breakdown in conversation.
A definition should provide a clear and precise explanation of the meaning of the key terms used within your micro-philosophy.
Let's look at an example of a philosophical definition.
Suppose that I have the positive belief that:
"The physical world is the only thing that is real"
Someone might ask me, "What do you mean by the word 'real'?".
I can then offer a definition, saying:
"By 'reality' I mean that which exists independently of human perception"
Whether or not that is a good or bad definition is not the point here.
The point is that you want to try and make it clear to yourself and others what key terms like "real" mean, so that you can not only understand your own thinking, but productively engage with other people's micro-philosophies.
In this week's assignment, I will explain how to construct a definition in more detail below.
To sum up, in your micro-philosophy, a definition is like a neutron.
It is a neutral, structural component that helps shape and stabilize the system without being an assertion of truth on its own.
Now that we have a handle on the two fundamental parts of a core belief, let's look more closely at what fringe beliefs are.
Fringe Beliefs
Fringe beliefs, or non-core beliefs, are like electrons that orbit around the nucleus.
They are negatively charged and can be derived from your core beliefs.
For example, if you believe that death is the permanent end of human existence, then you can derive that there is no afterlife, no Heaven, no immortal soul, etc.
Fringe beliefs share a strong relationship to specific core beliefs, but are not central to your micro-philosophy, and subject to change.
Fringe beliefs help you understand the implications and significance of your core beliefs and how your micro-philosophy relates to other belief systems.
No beliefs exist in isolation.
The micro-philosophy framework is designed to help attach everything you believe to some position in the overall system.
Thus, even though fringe beliefs are unstable and not central, they still have connections to core beliefs and play a role in the overall system.
While it is physically possible for electrons to "float free" outside of any system, these states are incredibly rare and do not last for long.
If we never connect our fringe beliefs to core beliefs, our minds will be in a state of psychic entropy, or disordered chaos.
We will have all sorts of thoughts about what we think is wrong, but not understand how those beliefs are connected to what we think is right.
It is important to think critically about other people's ideas that you disagree with, but it is just as important to understand what you think is true and how those two things are connected.
Why do you disagree?
What do you believe that explains why you disagree?
You need both.
Fringe beliefs are not just random negations or arbitrary judgments.
They are negations of ideas that conflict with your core beliefs.
To reject an idea that conflicts with your core belief is different than hearing something and saying that "this sounds wrong to me".
Instead, your micro-philosophy allows you to say why you think it is wrong.
Your micro-philosophy gives you the "because".
It allows you to have your own developed position and say things like "I disagree with this because I do not believe in an afterlife" and "I do not believe in an afterlife because I believe that there only exists a single physical reality which we inhabit".
By explicitly mapping out the connections between fringe and core beliefs, it is possible to develop and defend a logically consistent worldview.
This also makes it easier to identify which beliefs (in your own system and other people's) may need to be refined or changed entirely to avoid internal contradictions.
Perhaps a fringe belief conflicts with another fringe belief.
In this case, you can look and see whether one of your core beliefs needs to be revised, or whether one of the fringe beliefs needs to be revised (or both!).
Changing or eliminating a core belief would radically alter your micro-philosophy.
But changing or eliminating a fringe belief is much less likely to have an impact on the system as a whole.
To sum up:
An atomic belief consists of a positive belief, a definition, and a set of negative beliefs that surround the core.
Identifying and developing your atomic beliefs allows you to develop your own micro-philosophy.
Having and understanding your own micro-philosophy allows you to have a deeper understanding of who you are and your position in the world, as well as how you relates to other people and other cultures more generally.
A well developed micro-philosophy has massive benefits for your intellectual and spiritual life, such as deeper conversations with others, the ability to learn new ideas in a more meaningful way, and the power to shape and reshape who you are.
If you follow this process carefully, you will be more self-reflective, more open-minded, and more interesting to talk to.
Before explaining the connections between these elements, let's briefly look at an example of an atomic belief.
Here is an example of an Atomic Belief Element that I made in my favorite writing app Kortex.
Kortex is the second-brain writing app that I use to write these newsletters, create micro-philosophy templates, and organize my intellectual life.
By the way, if you sign up for Kortex using my affiliate link below, you can gain access to a free Belief Finder Template in just 2 steps.
Here’s how:
1) Create a Kortex account using this link in a new tab:
Then
2) Follow this link to the template and click “duplicate” in the top right corner: Duplicate The Belief Finder Template
If you want to read more about how I use Kortex for creating a micro-philosophy, I recently posted an X thread about it here.
The Benefits Of The Atomic Belief System
Clarifying your atomic beliefs helps you understand how your own commitments hang together.
This is important for weeding out contradictory or unsupported beliefs that can often go years or, in some cases, an entire lifetime without being discovered.
The atomic belief system forces you to clarify what logically follows from accepting your core beliefs, which also deepens your relationship to them.
Additionally, this system encourages rigorous philosophical thinking.
Developing your philosophical reasoning skills will not only allow you to sharpen your core beliefs, but also help you defend yourself against the onslaught of bad ideas that we are constantly bombarded with.
Finally, understanding your atomic beliefs will allow you to act with confidence in the world because you understand the fundamental reasons behind how you are choosing to live.
Connecting Core and Fringe Beliefs
I have said in previous newsletters that a micro-philosophy is a structured system of beliefs.
It is not just a list of positive beliefs, definitions, and negative beliefs.
A list is useful, but it can be made much more powerful if you understand the connections between various beliefs.
If you wanted to understand music and just made a list of all the notes in a song, you wouldn't get very far.
If you really wanted to understand a song, you would study how the notes are arranged to create chords, melodies, and themes.
It is true that all music is composed of sounds or notes, but how they are arranged is what matters.
As I mentioned above, fringe beliefs can be thought of as emerging from specific core beliefs.
The connections between core beliefs and fringe beliefs can be thought of as atomic bonds.
Atoms are held together by atomic bonds.
Atomic bonds are what allow atoms to form molecules or compounds.
These bonds can vary in their strength and quality depending on how the atoms and electrons interact with one another.
The stablest atomic bonds are called "covalent bonds".
For example, a water molecule is held together by covalent bonds between Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms (H20).
Covalent bonds represent deep, shared connections between core beliefs and peripheral beliefs.
As we saw above, a core belief like “Reality is governed by natural laws” can form a covalent bond with a fringe belief such as “There are no supernatural explanations".
These bonds are strong because the fringe belief relies heavily on the core belief for support and coherence.
Within a micro-philosophy, atomic beliefs are held together by various kinds of abstract connections, such as logical connections, personal experiences, and memory.
Like the physical forces that hold together the atom, the laws of logic, and the depth of your personal experiences, memories, and convictions, bind together various ideas in your soul.
Under extreme conditions, even the strongest bonds can be broken.
This is how core beliefs can change.
How Can Core Beliefs Change?
In physics, there are roughly 6 ways that atoms can change:
Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear Fission
Radioactive Decay
High-Energy Collision
Nuclear Disintegration
Anti-Matter Annihilation
Each way in which an atom can change will correspond to a way in which your core beliefs can change.
Let's go through each kind of change and compare it to core belief change.
#1 Nuclear Fusion:
Two atomic nuclei can combine to form a heavier nucleus.
In the same way, two core beliefs can be synthesized to form a compound belief.
#2 Nuclear Fission:
A nucleus can split into a smaller nuclei (this is what happens in a nuclear weapon)
A core belief can be split apart into smaller beliefs.
#3 Radioactive Decay:
Some nuclei naturally decay over time and transform into a new element.
Core beliefs can change gradually as we gain life experience and eventually gain a new significance or meaning.
#4 High-Energy Collision:
When a nucleus is bombarded by high-energy particles, it can transform.
Core beliefs can change given new information that forces us to transform or seriously revise them.
Another kind of change a nucleus can undergo is destructive.
Just as your core beliefs can change and develop over time, they can also be completely torn apart or annihilated by extreme life conditions.
Here are 2 kinds of destructive changes that can happen to an atom, and their equivalents for core beliefs.
#5 Nuclear Disintegration:
In extreme conditions, such as a supernova, a nucleus can be ripped apart into sub-atomic particles.
As a result of extreme stress, trauma, or transformational experiences, your core beliefs can be torn apart entirely.
#6 Anti-Matter Collision:
A nucleus can encounter anti-matter and get completely annihilated.
A core belief can interact with new evidence, disproof, or it's negation and become completely unbelievable.
Despite their robust stability, it is possible for core beliefs to change under the right conditions.
If this was not possible, then it would not be possible for human beings to change and grow throughout their lives.
Assignment #3: Connect Core Beliefs And Fringe Beliefs
In this week's assignment, you are going to connect your core beliefs with various fringe beliefs to unpack the implications of your micro-philosophy.
Step #1: Refine Your Core Belief Statement
By now you have completed your list of 20 philosophical beliefs and your Core Belief Statement.
(If you missed the last two assignments, you can access them here and here)
In this step, you should review your Core Belief Statement and rewrite each core belief in the language of a positive belief and attach to each positive belief any definitions that you think are necessary for clarifying key terms.
Ask yourself:
"What does my core belief assume?"
"What do I mean by 'x'"?
A well-formed definition in your micro-philosophy should:
Be clear and unambiguous
Try to void vague or circular definitions, such as "Truth is whatever is true", or "Reality is what is truly real".
Make neutral definitions
A definition should not try to justify a belief, or say something true or false about the world.
For example, avoid saying something like "By 'reality' I mean what was created by God because everything that exists was created by God". Instead, you can say something like "By 'reality' I mean the created world". This can be combined with a core belief that "Reality was created by God".
Step #2: Review Your 20 Philosophical Beliefs
Alongside your revised Core Belief Statement, review your initial list of 20 philosophical beliefs.
While reviewing this list, you should look for any obvious connections between your beliefs on this list and your core beliefs.
Ask yourself:
"Are there any common terms on this list and my Core Belief Statement?"
"Which of the beliefs on this list is supported by a core belief?"
"Can I turn this into a negative statement and connect it to a core belief?"
Step #3: Connect Core And Fringe Beliefs
For each core belief, try to list 1-4 fringe beliefs that you think can be logically deduced from it.
In other words, assuming your core belief is true, what negative statements must also be true?
Let's look at another example:
If you have the core belief that "Morality is relative to culture", then you can deduce at least 3 fringe beliefs from this:
"There is no universal moral truth"
"God's commands are not the source of morality"
"The source of morality is not supernatural"
Step #4: Reflect On Your Results
Here are 5 reflection questions for you to think about:
1) Do any of your fringe beliefs surprise you?
2) Are there any contradictions in your belief system that you identified?
3) Were there any terms you struggled to define?
4) Do you feel a deeper connection to your beliefs?
5) What topics do you want to explore further?
Conclusion
Your micro-philosophy is continuously evolving, because you are continuously evolving as a person.
The progress you have made so far has been awesome and should serve as a launchpad for going deeper and deeper into the world of ideas.
Do not treat these results as static or permanent definitions of who you are, but as solid foundations which you can continue to build upon and expand.
A long term goal is to not only know what your atomic beliefs are, but to be able to develop arguments that justify their truth to yourself and others.
But that advanced topic will have to wait until another day.
In the meantime, I recommend that you continue to write down philosophical beliefs that you think about throughout the day and see if you can fit them into your existing system.
In the next newsletter, I will teach you how to think about and identify your core values.
Thank you for reading.
-Paul
Woah!!!