Conviction

Conviction(s) • the innate tendencies, drives, and emotions that initiate our beliefs, ideas and behavior.

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Convictions work in the background, not just unnoticed but unnoticeable. Often there is a profound disconnect between the beliefs, ideas and behavior initiated by convictions and the convictions themselves.

Consider the bumblebee. A bumblebee’s convictions conspire within the bee to initiate a behavior: the collection of nectar. All you do if you’re a bumblebee is collect nectar.

But, bumblebees are not judged on their ability to collect nectar. Bumblebees are judged on their ability to move pollen from one plant to another.

To put it starkly, the vital role the bumblebee plays in the life of everybody on planet Earth is notable to everyone … except the bee.

That’s the downright unnerving nature of convictions.

Of course, human beings are not bumblebees and you may well object that human convictions are counterbalanced by consciousness. If so, you’re just not thinking.

Pretend the two shapes shown below are characters in a new graphic alphabet. One shape is called Buba and the other shape is called Kiki.

If these characters were part of the English alphabet we might call them T and E or W and D. But they are not English alphabet characters, they are part of a pretend graphic alphabet.

Which shape is Buba and which shape is Kiki?

Think about it for a bit. Notice that the shapes are inanimate. They make no implication one-way or the other. Whichever answer you choose, it is entirely from you.

When you have an answer click the play button and the shape you call Kiki will be made large and the shape you call Buba will be reduced in size.

I predicted your answer correctly because the idea of a Buba and a Kiki is the result of convictions. In this case, how your mind (mine too) associates shapes to words. A soft shape puts the idea of a soft word into the mind. The idea of a sharp word is brought to mind when presented with a sharp shape.

That’s what words are, they are ideas we can pronounce. Sounds are ideas we can hear, gustatory and olfactory sensations are ideas we can taste and smell, pictures are ideas we can see, and tactile stimulations are ideas we can literally feel. And those ideas (all ideas) are initiated by our convictions.

I do not argue that convictions control our lives. Culture counts too. But the plain truth is our beliefs, ideas and behavior are initiated by our convictions; the cornerstones of our lives!

That is why the Buba / Kiki example is so powerful, and it is also why the excerpt for this Straight-Up Dictionary entry is, “You may not know exactly what people are thinking, but you can know how people think.”