If you know it isn’t true, you aren’t believing it. If you mean acting as though something is true when you don’t believe it, I’m sure you can think of all sort of situations where this might be good or useful. If you mean convincing yourself that something is true that you don’t think is true now, that’s called education.
When you find yourself believing something that you don’t think you’re supposed to believe, that often is a result of only being exposed to one side of a controversial issue. So for example, you WANT to believe that Socialism is the best answer, even though it seems like a fantasy, it can’t possibly be true. Well, maybe it only seems like it can’t possibly be true because you’ve sat there like a turd letting yourself be badgered by Capitalist ‘intellectuals’, and you should get up off your ass and read what intelligent Socialists are saying by way of a rebuttal. Or, maybe Socialism really is bullshit and you should stop clinging to it as an ideal.
Whatever it is you believe, chances are there’s people smarter than you that believe it too, and people smarter than you that think it’s bullshit. So read, read, read. Don’t let yourself be pushed around by what the scholars in your immediate vicinity (electronic or physical) proclaim, and don’t let yourself be pushed around by your own prior prejudices.
Does truth have intrinsic value? Of course not. If your truths are not helping you sufficiently, then you ought to be seeking new, better truths.
If a “lie” manifests real helpfulness to you, real utility, then is this not also representative of… a truth?
Everyone is simply believing in their own fiction. Everyone. Even and especially those who don’t know or can’t admit it.
Simple: when your mind becomes spacious and vast enough to contain higher contexts of value and new hierarchies of power and utility. Losing the black and white “this is true that is false” fairytale way of looking at life is a good start, as is grounding the belief in the value of “truth” in something more real, more potent, more practical, more mature, more vibrant, more alive and more powerful than a mere unquestionable “for its own sake”.
Yes, it usually happens when people are at the lowest or extreme in their life. At those times (such as with close calls with death) things like logic simply fall away and become irrelevant. The person does not think or reason, but simply experiences. And at those times frequently faith is the only thing (even if for a brief moment) that can sustain their will to continue to live. It is probably wired in us (it is more instinctual than anything else, a kind of evolved survival mechanism). In that case, it is practical more than anything else, and thus, worthwhile.
There are two values here which do not necessarily coincide: truth and strength. They only coincide if the truth is more burdensome than one’s fiction. So the question is: would you consider it less of a problem to believe in your own fiction if it were true, or if doing so made you unhappy (note that this is an exclusive “or”)? It seems that the former is the case. But then why do you value truth? I mean: what’s your rationale for valuing truth?
These are themselves polar questions. But must it necessarily be only one or the other OR not only one or the other? Must I view “truth” and “fiction” as either entirely separate and exclusive of each other, OR not?..
My answer to all four latter questions is: logically, yes.
Truths make necessary use of fiction. Fiction makes necessary use of truth. If you want to get down into it, these labels are insufficient for the mind that aspires to go beyond the habitual surface of binary oppositions, to really get into what is going on when we employ notions such as “truth” and “fiction”.
The distinction between staying on said surface and really getting into what’s going on is itself a binary opposition. We cannot get around logic and still make sense.
Why would you have to rationalize it? No one knows what absolute Truth is and the good that emanates from that. Nor is Reality a thing that’s experienced in one unequivocal way shared by everyone in the world.
Supposing I tell you “This is the way,” – then where are you? You experience what I tell you. This knowledge you are going to use and create a state of being and think that you have experienced Reality or that you have experienced truth. But that is not the truth.
You don’t know what is good. You know only what is good for you. That’s all you are interested in. Everything centers around that; all your ability and reason centers around that. I’m not being cynical. That’s a fact, nothing wrong with it. I’m not saying anything against it. The situations change but it is that which is guiding you through all situations. I’m not saying it is wrong, you see. If it is not so something must be wrong with you.
As long as you are operating in the field of what they call the pair of opposites – true/not true, rational/irrational, better/worse – you will always be choosy in every situation. That is all, you cannot help that.