{"id":920,"date":"2021-08-03T21:35:44","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T01:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/?p=920"},"modified":"2021-08-03T21:49:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T01:49:56","slug":"reading-gurdjieff-on-verification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/reading-gurdjieff-on-verification\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Gurdjieff: On Verification"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have not by nature a critical mind, your staying here is useless.\u201d<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0<\/span>Study House aphorism<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.\u201d<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0Views from the Real World, p. 78<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Verification is a foundational idea in Mr. Gurdjieff’s teaching: to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.\u00a0It is important to note that he does not say to disbelieve everything that you cannot verify, because\u00a0disbelief is merely belief in a negative.\u00a0<\/span>That which we have not yet verified is neither believed nor disbelieved but should remain categorized as unverified.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet… we very often believe (or disbelieve) without verifying. Why?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To start, we are lazy<\/strong> by nature. It is simply easier to believe or disbelieve without verifying. Intellectual rigor is too much work! To check all the incoming information, especially in this so-called \u201cInformation Age\u201d, is a daunting task.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In our thinking, we are undisciplined<\/strong>, and we may briefly categorize new information as unverified, but over time this information leaks into the general pool of what we think we have verified.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, we are not comfortable with the feeling of dissatisfaction<\/strong> that comes from delaying gratification until we have verified something, and rather than sit with not having yet verified, we fall into automatically believing or disbelieving.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we may forget that our experiences are subjective<\/strong>, and\u00a0we tend to believe our potentially faulty interpretation of them without question. Seeing is believing, right?<\/p>\n

Sometimes we believe or disbelieve because the information agrees with our biases<\/strong>\u2014news that is too good to check.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we believe because there is external social pressure<\/strong> to accept what we haven’t verified.\u00a0On the other hand, we may also believe because it is less of a hassle to seek peer input<\/strong> on what we ought to verify, whether our peers bring social pressure or not.<\/p>\n

In terms of the work itself, we need to establish a framework of precisely what we are verifying<\/strong>. We need to establish precisely what was said. This is part of the reason Mr. Gurdjieff preserved his teaching in written form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you have not by nature a critical mind, your staying here is useless.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Study House aphorism \u201cI ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.\u201d \u2013\u00a0Views from the Real World, p. 78 Verification is a foundational idea in Mr. Gurdjieff’s teaching: to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.\u00a0It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gurdjieffism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=920"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":952,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920\/revisions\/952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robcouture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}