Eloquence, beauty, possibility of every word written being wrong and I can go on and on and on about this excellent post by E.D. Kain (here and here). This happens to be my quintessential confirmation bias against the "regular" confirmation bias which is a kinda of a paradoxical protective shell preserving the possibility, openness and awareness of all my beliefs could be wrong (leave alone the belief of others). But at the same time navigating through slowly and steadily without soaking in the sea of skepticism. Talk about patience and social taboo!!
For a long time I viewed my many doubts as a sort of impediment rather than a philosophical weathervane. From time to time, still, I crumble under the weight of it all and embrace some false certainty, as though I can point myself in some singular direction regardless of the winds of change and time. I set my course and go unblinkingly into the black. Then, somewhere out at sea, I remember myself. I remember that the people who seem most certain in this world are often the least; and that the waters are deeper than I can comprehend. It would be wiser not to underestimate their depths. It would be wiser to treat this ocean of human knowledge with humility.
I think doubt is a much maligned, much misunderstood thing; perhaps because people never really embrace it, never really try to understand why it might be – in and of itself – a positive force, but instead find ways to extinguish it utterly. Doubt is cast in our society as a malfunction, something to overcome, something broken. I don’t see it that way anymore. Yes, some people become mired in it, become paralyzed by indecision – there are reasons we have phrases like “wracked with doubt” or “mired in doubt” and so on and so forth. But doubt is not the same thing as uncertainty. “Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again.”
Certainty is an alluring trap; the temptation of intellectual or spiritual closure pulls us under, riptide-like, into its soporific current. A release from our uncertainty is a powerful tonic. It explains the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, American exceptionalism, and essentially progressivism writ large. And our certainty only increases as the subject matter becomes more complex and our expertise (or faith in expertise) becomes more precise.
In short, I am not sure if I am a conservative or a liberal or a libertarian or an independent. I only know that I am an adherent to the philosophy of doubt (however often I am lured by its seductive twin) and that, as such, I tend to abhor movement politics, cringe at the faux certainty of those good team players so quick to shut down debate – and sometimes, every now and then, envy the certainty of these movements and their followers. I fear the capacity man has for evil and destruction more than I am able to place hope in his good intentions; and I worry more about the unintended consequences of people who mean well but are given too much power to enact their well-intentioned ideas. I would prefer to keep power as dispersed as possible even if it means giving up on some good ideas. But I am not certain that I am right about this. It is very possible I am wrong. I am a doubter, and a Gemini, and I will continue in this infuriatingly inconsistent philosophy because I am only certain about one thing: doubt is merely the least worse option of the bunch, and from where I’m standing, that is enough. I will undoubtedly be misunderstood, but as Emerson rightly asked – “Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?”
Because I am full of doubt and because I don’t want to attain the sort of certainty that I fear might blind me. Of course, this is not necessarily a call for incrementalism either as some commenters read it – I believe in radical change occasionally as well, and am somewhat radical when it comes to civil liberties. I attempt to temper my own radicalism by acknowledging that we are in a democracy, and so we must muddle through.
For a long time I viewed my many doubts as a sort of impediment rather than a philosophical weathervane. From time to time, still, I crumble under the weight of it all and embrace some false certainty, as though I can point myself in some singular direction regardless of the winds of change and time. I set my course and go unblinkingly into the black. Then, somewhere out at sea, I remember myself. I remember that the people who seem most certain in this world are often the least; and that the waters are deeper than I can comprehend. It would be wiser not to underestimate their depths. It would be wiser to treat this ocean of human knowledge with humility.
I think doubt is a much maligned, much misunderstood thing; perhaps because people never really embrace it, never really try to understand why it might be – in and of itself – a positive force, but instead find ways to extinguish it utterly. Doubt is cast in our society as a malfunction, something to overcome, something broken. I don’t see it that way anymore. Yes, some people become mired in it, become paralyzed by indecision – there are reasons we have phrases like “wracked with doubt” or “mired in doubt” and so on and so forth. But doubt is not the same thing as uncertainty. “Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again.”
Certainty is an alluring trap; the temptation of intellectual or spiritual closure pulls us under, riptide-like, into its soporific current. A release from our uncertainty is a powerful tonic. It explains the socialist revolutions of the 20th century, American exceptionalism, and essentially progressivism writ large. And our certainty only increases as the subject matter becomes more complex and our expertise (or faith in expertise) becomes more precise.
In short, I am not sure if I am a conservative or a liberal or a libertarian or an independent. I only know that I am an adherent to the philosophy of doubt (however often I am lured by its seductive twin) and that, as such, I tend to abhor movement politics, cringe at the faux certainty of those good team players so quick to shut down debate – and sometimes, every now and then, envy the certainty of these movements and their followers. I fear the capacity man has for evil and destruction more than I am able to place hope in his good intentions; and I worry more about the unintended consequences of people who mean well but are given too much power to enact their well-intentioned ideas. I would prefer to keep power as dispersed as possible even if it means giving up on some good ideas. But I am not certain that I am right about this. It is very possible I am wrong. I am a doubter, and a Gemini, and I will continue in this infuriatingly inconsistent philosophy because I am only certain about one thing: doubt is merely the least worse option of the bunch, and from where I’m standing, that is enough. I will undoubtedly be misunderstood, but as Emerson rightly asked – “Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?”
Because I am full of doubt and because I don’t want to attain the sort of certainty that I fear might blind me. Of course, this is not necessarily a call for incrementalism either as some commenters read it – I believe in radical change occasionally as well, and am somewhat radical when it comes to civil liberties. I attempt to temper my own radicalism by acknowledging that we are in a democracy, and so we must muddle through.
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