Faith/Faith/Ideology/Positivity of Ideas

The World of Faith Faith system Beliefs Artifacts Creatures World History Faith Basics Reality Sentience Ideology Stereotypes Monotypes Ways Confidence Disorders Terminology Ideology Believability of Ideas Harbingers of Ideas Suppression of Ideas Diffusion of Ideas Evolution of Ideas Positivity of Ideas Displacement of Ideas

Positivity of Ideas The subjectivity of reality in the world of Faith means that beliefs can become reinforced when reality is altered as a result of a belief. This happens because people can observe the change in reality and will attribute it to the belief being truthful. Then, the strengthening of this belief causes such alterations of reality to be more frequent, thereby reinforcing peoples’ belief in it still further. These ideas are called “positive” ideas; most ideas are positive. However, ideas that say that something won’t be altered - broadly classified as countermagic or antimagic - will not be readily reinforced, since these beliefs tend to result in nothing happening, which people often believe would be the result even without that belief being true. Hence, when nothing happens, they may not come to believe that it is this belief that is responsible, and hence their belief in it will not be reinforced. Hence, such “negative” ideas do not gain much traction, and will always be dominated by the “positive” ideas. The result of this is that when people want to manufact a belief against a positive idea, they will meet only limited success using a negative idea. Instead, they can use what are called “responsive” ideas, which respond to others’ working of positive ideas, and actively do something of their own; in other words, to use a positive idea to fight another positive idea. Most commonly, responsive ideas are punitive and promise dire consequences on those who would use their positive ideas to work spells.