The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [11]
“Awfully nice!” Joseph commented.
“Sir, I will not compromise,” Leon went on. “I believe that right is right and wrong is wrong. That’s why I do not care to discuss further, because I have already told the truth pertaining to these gentlemen. That’s my sincere belief. You don’t need any further discussion on my part, sir.”
“Well, that’s who I am,” Joseph put in. “I know I’m God, Christ, the Holy Spirit. Joseph Cassel, House of England. I worked for England, the English, and I saved the world. It’s all right; there’s nothing wrong. It’s nice, sweet, swell!”
“On the merits that interferences through duping and electronics are against me,” Leon said, “and that’s been going on ever since I was conceived—I found out that I died the death in 1953. In the six years I’ve been here, sir, I know what’s going on. I know what the finality is, how it’s going to terminate. And my uncle promised me that he is going to do the fireworks in a few days and I believe it is very possible that it will be on July fourth, and I’ve been waiting for my redemption for a long time. I know that after he strikes me dead I will be dead for three and a half days. God Almighty will raise me from the dead. That’s the promise I have been given better than six years ago.”
—Do you still want to be Christ again after you die the death?—
“I’m still He, and I’m still going to try my enemies through death, sir,” was Leon’s answer. “Sir, if you will excuse me, I do not care to sit in on any more discussions.”
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM OF IDENTITY
LET ME EMPHASIZE at the outset that my main purpose in bringing the three Christs together was scientific—the end result of investigations in which, as a social psychologist, I had a long-standing interest. On the theoretical side, these investigations concerned a problem basic to an understanding of human personality—the nature of the systems of belief that people hold. How do these systems develop? What functions do they serve? Why are some relatively open and others relatively closed? Under what circumstances can a system of belief—especially a closed system—be changed? If a system of belief does change, by what process does it do so? When it changes, does it change all at once or gradually? If it changes gradually, what sequence does the change follow? And is this sequence accidental or has it a definite pattern?[1]
These questions are not easy to answer in view of the fact that a grown person has tens of thousands of beliefs, organized somehow into a unified system, and generally highly resistant to change.
The present investigation is based on three simple assumptions. (1) Not all the beliefs a person holds are of equal importance to him; beliefs range from central to peripheral. (2) The more central—or, in our terminology, the more primitive—a belief, the more it will resist change. (3) If a primitive belief is somehow changed, the repercussions in the rest of the system will be wide—far wider than those produced by change in a peripheral belief.
These assumptions are not unlike those made by the atomic physicist, who conceives of the atom as made up of electrons spinning in orbit around a central nucleus composed of particles held together in a stable structure. It is in the nucleus that the vast energy of the atom is contained; when this energy is released—through a process such as fission or fusion—the structures of the nucleus and of the atom itself are dramatically changed. If this analogy holds, primitive beliefs are the nucleus of any system of beliefs; if they can be made to change, the entire system will be altered.
By what criteria can one decide which of a person’s countless beliefs are primitive? The essential factor is that they are taken for granted: a person’s primitive beliefs represent the basic truths he holds about physical reality, social reality, and himself and his own nature. Like all beliefs, conscious or unconscious, they have a personal aspect: they are rooted in the individual’s experience and in the evidence of his senses. Like all beliefs, they also have