For me, it’s difficult to imagine someone actually believing the QAnon and other weirdo conspiracy theories. I understand how people can get hooked on it since it feeds into their emotional issues and they live in digital bubbles that confirm what they want to believe. But it’s hard to imagine they actually believe it. Somewhere in them, they know they live in a bubble. They know the sources are questionable. They know they do it to feed emotional issues.
And that’s really the same with all beliefs, for all of us. Somewhere in us, we know we want to believe but don’t really. We know we cannot know for certain. We know we are largely doing it to feed our emotional issues.
So on the surface, the answer is yes. In a sense, we do believe whatever we appear to believe. We perceive the world through our beliefs. We think and feel as if it’s true. We live and act as if it’s true. And yet, somewhere in us, we know what we are doing. We know we allow ourselves to get caught up in a fantasy. The fantasy of knowing something for certain we cannot know.