It's contagious. The whole Harold Camping Apocalypse Thang has helped me to understand what I find distressing about belief, when it is expressed as total, uncompromising conviction that one's subjective reality is synonymous with Reality. Camping was just the latest in a centuries-old tradition of people who believe their own subjective stories are so real and so undeniable that they confuse them with Reality. He is no different from Jim Jones, or Marshall Applewhite (leader of the Heaven's Gate cult). Heck, he even looks like Marshall Applewhite.
Sadly, he is also no different from from other charismatic guys who believed that their subjective story constituted Reality, like Jesus or Mohammed. Same unquestioning belief in their own subjective reality, same certainty that this subjective vision was equivalent to Reality, the way it should be for other people. I don't think any of them were ever able to say to themselves, much less out loud, "Y'know, I could be wrong." I don't think any of these guys ever for a moment cons- ciously questioned the soundness of their own beliefs, or the reality of their subjective perceptions. They just assumed that they were true. And that level of assumption -- that sense of absolute certainty -- is often perceived by other people as "charisma." These other people have doubts. They are not as convinced as these charismatic narcissists that they know the Truth. So something in them gloms onto the "I cannot possibly be wrong" types and wants to believe what they believe, so that they can stop worrying about possibly being wrong themselves. It's the effect that these charismatic True Believers have on other people that I find suspect, and dangerous. If they cannot express the thought, "Y'know, I could be wrong," it never occurs to them to think that there could be a down side to convincing others to believe the same things they believe. They don't consider even for a moment that getting other people to believe the things they believe could harm them. They don't admit that possibility to themselves as even a possibility, no more than they admit to themselves there is a possibility they could be wrong. There is always the possibility they could be wrong. There is an even greater possibility that no one in human history has ever been "right," in the sense that their subjective vision of reality constituted Reality. I think it's healthy to have doubts, and to say to oneself every so often, "Y'know, I could be wrong." In the world of spiritual teachers, I would never for an instant consider studying with with a teacher who could not say the words "Y'know, I could be wrong," and who did not say it often. Your mileage may vary.
