Doubting vs Believing

 Tonight, I have been reflecting on Peter Elbow, who wrote an article on the 'believing game' vs 'the doubting game'. According to Elbow, there are two very distinct ways of interpreting events: one which looks at things through a critical, deconstructive lens (doubting), while the other with a more inspirational, faith-based perspective (believing). The current vogue in academia is to play the doubting game, particularly by looking at events in terms of underlying power dynamics. There is a certain clarity in this method and approach, because it allows people to be refreshingly clear and honest about the kinds of social motivations for what they are doing. For example, when we are in any organization, we don't just look at what inspires  people to be there, but what hidden agendas (socially based) might be influencing them in that situation. But I would have to argue that there is a price for the honest clarity of these approaches, and that price is to strip people down to the lowest elements. Are people, I wonder, entirely motivated by power? And how can we even frame power in relation to intention and motivation? Is power even at all about motivation?
     I suspect that people are not just doing things for power, even though power may be a consideration in what they are doing. When I look at people, I tend to see them as complex and deeply nuanced beings, who have complex reasons and motivations for what they do that even they themselves may not fully comprehend. Knowing the social dimensions or political aspects of what people do is certainly one way of looking clearly and honestly at their behavior. But I think it would be a great injustice to reduce people to elements of power or powered relationships. It might be more helpful to suggest that there is no final reduction to anything, since the way we see things is always immersed in our own particular ways of seeing, which are also interwoven with social/psychological elements.  And even the way people relate to each other is constantly in a state of flux  or change.
    So what is the alternative "believing game" made up of? I think what underpins the believing game is the way in which people assume that other people's intent is not to harm. In Buddhism, the attitude is that every being possesses the seed of wisdom and compassion within them. There isn't really a defective person or being in Buddhism, even though beings are prone to make mistakes due to misguided views or distorted lenses. If I at least believe that beings have this wisdom already in them, I am not trying to somehow replace who they are with a theoretical template that is foreign to their being and thriving. Instead, I am trying as much as I can to understand their ways so that their Buddha nature is clear to me, This is quite different from the Machiavellian view which has inspired a lot of the post-modern critical approaches to looking at selves and others. Under this latter view, people are only units in a greater scheme of dominant power and oppression. Much of that may be true, but it's not the only thing in the universe. And again, I think that focusing too much on dominance/oppression overshadows and even (dare I say) oppresses the aspects of ourselves that are connected to wisdom and compassion.
       Without the fundamental faith that people of all cultures and walks of life have wisdom, it can be quite easy to perpetuate power games and struggles. I certainly hope that this belief in people's wisdom does not disappear in academia.

Elbow, Peter (2008), "The Believing Game: Methodological Believing" http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=eng_faculty_pubs