Change of Belief

Suspended belief is the theory that with fiction you need to have your logic washed away during the period in which to read or watch something you just know couldn't be true. But is that really suspended belief or lack of knowledge? I wonder sometimes because of the horrific or strange things; criminal acts, possible monster sightings, U.S. Navy Seal raids on Osama in Pakistan, that I would normally not consider truthful. After all, are you really going to sit there and tell me that you know what would happen in any scenario? Can you really state for me whether something could really happen or not? I don't know.

I watched the movie R.E.D. with a few friends. They questioned whether any of it could happen. Like the character who uses a M16 as a baseball bat and knocks a grenade back to a bad guy in time for it to explode.

Logic would suggest that there is no way that could happen.

But what if the things that we term as logical or illogical are based on current knowledge?

I know that several people figured that we would not have a fusion-automobile. Or the ability to fly into space.

These things at one time were believed to be impossible. How can anyone break the sound barrier? That can't happen because it hasn't happened... yet.

When we look at monsters, we tend to rationalize that it is not possible for something of that magnitude to exist without getting a good picture of it. We've become a mass of C.S.I. and film buffs. Everything has a camera, everything must have logic attached to it. That's because if we don't see it, the thing does not exist.

But how do we know that something exists even if we film it? Osama bin Laden's photographs will likely be issued out via the Internet (which is silly of Obama and the White House to do otherwise, especially as new information on the compound raid is filtered out). How do we know, for a fact, that Osama's body is photographed?

Are you telling me that Osama's death photo couldn't be Photoshopped?

There are people who still deny the Apollo moon landing. They believe it is fake, that there is no way we ever reached the moon. It wouldn't matter if you brought 50,000 people to the moon daily, a significant portion of the populace will always believe that the moon is an impossible barrier.

People deny physics, or claim that physics must be adhered to in order to measure how something reacts. They call it the "laws of physics." But this is meaningless. We could have new adoptions of those laws, forgetting the old ones that we were told for many centuries were "the laws."

I know several people who believe in Big Foot. They have witnessed things, heard people's stories, believe others who claim to have seen Big Foot. Do I have any proof that these creatures do not exist? Before anyone suggests otherwise, keep in mind that animals thought to be extinct (or never to exist) have surfaced recently. A giant fish in Africa which people swore swam in the rivers but scientists and zoologists scolded the stories as being untrue. Then one day, they pull out the giant fish, say "hey, look at that" and the rule changes.

When looking at fiction, I wonder if writers are beholding themselves to standards not kept by reality. That is, things change. Attitudes, creatures, anything changes. The laws of society are always being altered.

Hell, look at this blog. This didn't exist ten years ago as a format. Neither did ebook publishing. It happened, things changed.

Suspended belief is because people don't dream. It should really be called, "ideas for things which may happen in the future, especially when things change..."