Thinking Makes It So

[context: "economic crises" going on now]

FAITH in the banks
FAITH in the financial system
FAITH in the economy

How can FAITH be the sustainer of anything?

Confidence. Truth. Believing that something is sound and true.

How can belief in something actually make that thing what you believe it to be - to be?

I don't get it? This is totally backwards to me. But that is what all the experts, government officials, and smart people of the world are saying is required to stabilize our economy - the banks, the financial system itself.

I don't get it.

The thing either exists or it doesn't. The qualities of the thing either is good or bad or somewhere in the middle. It's somewhat fair to characterize it at any given moment if it is to the left or to the right of that exact middle between Extreme good and Extreme bad. So this is not a black versus white issue.

So it is fair to say things can be described as GOOD or BAD.

The economy is either GOOD or BAD.
Banks are either GOOD or BAD
My BELIEF of whether something is GOOD or BAD can't actually make it become the very thing I believe it to be.

Can it?

Is this a paradox? Hidden wisdom? Magic? Mystical cause and effect in dimension of reality that we don't understand? Is this just some kind of hard-wired brain trick or semantic puzzle?

I don't get it. I can't say I believe it possible. I can't say I could get any reasonable person to confess that just simply believing in something MAKES it exist.

Yet I kind of believe it.

The economy rolls when people are confident. Banks work, the economic system works when people trust in it. We all kind of know this.

And this is true. (At least it sure appears to be.)

So is it the fact that these beliefs predominate across the masses? Is it the fact that the vast majority of people believing in, having faith in, trusting in some actual state of existence that actually makes it happen.

We all believe it is good and therefore it is good?

We all believe it is bad and therefore it is bad?

Does attitude itself MAKE the environment around us?!

And where does that leave the individual? Where does that lead me?

I think I am good therefore I am good?
I think I am bad therefore I am bad?