Deconstructing Human Beliefs: Three Men Make a Tiger

There have been tens of thousands of different beliefs about life that have come and gone throughout fifty centuries of human history.

None of them are an exception to the Chinese proverb “Three men make a tiger.”

In fact, human beliefs about life are not the exception, they are the rule.

What does “Three men make a tiger” mean?

It means that if enough people repeat absurd information, the premise will be mistakenly accepted as the truth by others.

Over time, it will become common knowledge that:

1. If it takes three men.
2. And you put them together.
3. You will create a tiger.

In other words, you can teach a human being to believe absolutely anything. Especially if they teach you as a child. Common knowledge is created. “Three men make a tiger.”

If a large group of people believes something, even if it is absurd, and you exist very close to this group of people, it is very likely that you believe it.

• You will not use critical thinking.
• You will not question.
• You will not investigate.
• You will accept it as true.
• You will believe it as fact.
• You will believe that it is absolutely safe.
• You will be magnetically drawn to others who share your belief that “three men make a tiger.”
• You will be more repelled by ideas that conflict with your own, such as the idea that “three men make an owl.”
• You will be unconsciously repelled by others who believe in other ideas, such as “three men make an owl.”
• You may be consciously intolerant of others who believe that “three men make an owl.”

Also, your parents believe that “Three men make a tiger.” Everyone in your community believes it. Common thoughts:

• “There are many of them, but only one of me. They must be right.”
• “Why should I make waves and disagree?”

What if millions of people thought that way? What if millions of people went through life believing absurd information, just because their parents and everyone in your community believed in something?

If you didn’t know yet, or if you don’t have time to become a spectator of the human condition, let me be the first to inform you:

It is not a couple of million people who think this way. They are a couple of billion.

It is not the minority of people who think this way. It is the majority.

Surprisingly, this concept applies to almost every idea about life that human civilization has created.

Asch’s conformity experiments from the 1950s illustrate this in practice, which you can watch in a 4-minute segment on YouTube.

The link between conformity, groupthink, and human ideas about life shouldn’t surprise you if you’ve ever sat down to contemplate civilization as a whole.

But it will be difficult for you to be both a participant and a spectator. If you find yourself investing emotions in ideas, especially if they involve creation myths, you don’t want to see them from the outside. Consider two opposing beliefs:

1. Today’s world religions suggest that there is eternal life after death (infinite life after death). This infinite life after death is a comforting and rational assumption in the 21st century that billions perceive as reality.
2. The idea that all life is an infinite chain. This would make the concepts of individuality, birth and death an illusion.

Which, # 1 or # 2, do you think is more aligned with reality? When you consider that the human condition gravitates toward fiction, but is repelled by reality, you can find the answer in both.

Point:

1. We have no problem applying infinity after our future death.
2. We have great difficulty applying infinity to our present life.

But why is this so? Why do we think in a group? Why is the concept of infinity awesome? Why does our way of thinking resemble a hive mind or a global brain?

Don’t kill the messenger – the reason is quite simple.

All life is one.