On the Usefulness of Doubt
I have doubt often. It is an uncomfortable thing to bear with, and it can be destructive at the wrong times or directed at the wrong things. But I’ve come to embrace it as a necessary part of a life well-lived.
There is truth in an adage I’ve heard: “Only fools and the very wise never vary.” The truth is, most of us are just humans trying to make their way in a difficult and complex world. Almost all of us get it wrong sometimes, and most of us get it wrong much of the time. In our maps of the world there are misnamed and misplaced features.
A lack of doubt is a hallmark of one that feels certain of themselves. That is not necessarily a bad thing, when it is justified. But it is my hunch that it is justified only occasionally. Doubt in a woman protecting herself and her family from an attacker could make a life and death difference-- but such extreme circumstances just don’t happen often. Certainty, simplicity, and rarity gossip on the same stoop. The things we face in the mundane everyday-- work, money, relationships with family and friends, all of these things are deeply complex, therefore almost never black and white, and therefore a sense of certainty is almost never justified.
Our brains, however, aren’t especially good at understanding the complex world around us. Brains didn’t evolve to comprehend the world-- it evolved to survive it. We crave simplicity, easy answers, concrete and black and white things that don’t demand a lot of brain power to understand. And thus comes the frenemy of certainty, simplicity, and rarity, the three sisters: deceptiveness, visiting them often, much to their secret chagrin. Doubt is uncomfortable. It is our psyche confronting us with the limitations and flaws we exhibit in our cherished and comfortable belief systems. So we deceive ourselves by offering ourselves reassuring, simple answers to patch up those flaws, not willing to allow the doubt to consume what we may have invested a great deal of ourselves into.
Unfortunately, this process is easy to hijack by those seeking power. We saw it in abundance during Hitler’s rise. Germany faced massive, complex problems, and so an aggrieved and suffering people, seeking understandable answers on which to place anger and blame, were easily convinced that it was the Jews. We see it to a lesser extent now, when Trump uses the spook of “antifa” to justify his aggressive actions against blue states. In both cases, however, the problems involved are often exaggerated, exploited, or simply nonexistent-- the purpose of these simple answers is not to explain, but to soothe, placate, flatter, and justify the organization of systems of power. Our simple little worldviews love to be confirmed, deception provides the confirmation, and all of a sudden we have lost our power and our rights.
Authoritarianism of all stripes thrives off of certainty. It loves to provide simple answers that soothe the sting of life’s vicissitudes. Doubt, then, is a great enemy to authoritarians. They cannot afford for their followers to doubt the cause-- if they do, the doubt will leach away at the very foundations of the system of power they build and benefit from. Doubt attacks the very pillars of authoritarianism. It’s part of why they use fear so much. Fear erases doubt-- if you are a proverbial mother guarding her family, then you cannot afford to doubt, and the seeds of doubt withdraw. If an authoritarian can whip up a threat (Jews, Antifa) and offer themselves as the salvation (Only I can fix it) then it erases doubt in the cause. It is also part of the reason why they are constantly at war-- war provokes fear, which makes the choice stark and simple, which causes doubt to withdraw.
But every cause has flaws. And authoritarianism of all stripes doubly so. Fear is a powerful motivator, but most of us cannot tolerate it being active for long. We have many other systems that motivate our actions, and for most of us they will activate eventually-- our consciences, our centers of love and beauty, our capacity to hope and dream, our love for others, our dedication and devotion to good causes-- Authoritarianism then has to find ways to combat those systems. Sometimes it succeeds, most often it doesn’t. The Thousand Year Reich lasted twelve.
We shouldn’t fear doubt. Used properly it is an effective tool to protect us from error, deception and the machinations of power seekers. We should be conscious of how we use it, of course, but we don’t give ourselves enough credit. There are few belief systems completely lacking in validity or truth. Every single one has some kernel, some nugget of wisdom on which a crystal of much greater beauty can germinate. Our consciences, our centers of love and beauty, our capacity to hope and dream, our love for others, our dedication and devotion to good causes-- they all predicate on the ability to unleash the acids of doubt on inferior materials. This cannot happen if we fear doubt.
Doubt, like so many other psychological mechanisms, is a very effective tool if we know how to use it. Put on your gloves and pour the drano down the sink. You’ll find the water flows better.
There is truth in an adage I’ve heard: “Only fools and the very wise never vary.” The truth is, most of us are just humans trying to make their way in a difficult and complex world. Almost all of us get it wrong sometimes, and most of us get it wrong much of the time. In our maps of the world there are misnamed and misplaced features.
A lack of doubt is a hallmark of one that feels certain of themselves. That is not necessarily a bad thing, when it is justified. But it is my hunch that it is justified only occasionally. Doubt in a woman protecting herself and her family from an attacker could make a life and death difference-- but such extreme circumstances just don’t happen often. Certainty, simplicity, and rarity gossip on the same stoop. The things we face in the mundane everyday-- work, money, relationships with family and friends, all of these things are deeply complex, therefore almost never black and white, and therefore a sense of certainty is almost never justified.
Our brains, however, aren’t especially good at understanding the complex world around us. Brains didn’t evolve to comprehend the world-- it evolved to survive it. We crave simplicity, easy answers, concrete and black and white things that don’t demand a lot of brain power to understand. And thus comes the frenemy of certainty, simplicity, and rarity, the three sisters: deceptiveness, visiting them often, much to their secret chagrin. Doubt is uncomfortable. It is our psyche confronting us with the limitations and flaws we exhibit in our cherished and comfortable belief systems. So we deceive ourselves by offering ourselves reassuring, simple answers to patch up those flaws, not willing to allow the doubt to consume what we may have invested a great deal of ourselves into.
Unfortunately, this process is easy to hijack by those seeking power. We saw it in abundance during Hitler’s rise. Germany faced massive, complex problems, and so an aggrieved and suffering people, seeking understandable answers on which to place anger and blame, were easily convinced that it was the Jews. We see it to a lesser extent now, when Trump uses the spook of “antifa” to justify his aggressive actions against blue states. In both cases, however, the problems involved are often exaggerated, exploited, or simply nonexistent-- the purpose of these simple answers is not to explain, but to soothe, placate, flatter, and justify the organization of systems of power. Our simple little worldviews love to be confirmed, deception provides the confirmation, and all of a sudden we have lost our power and our rights.
Authoritarianism of all stripes thrives off of certainty. It loves to provide simple answers that soothe the sting of life’s vicissitudes. Doubt, then, is a great enemy to authoritarians. They cannot afford for their followers to doubt the cause-- if they do, the doubt will leach away at the very foundations of the system of power they build and benefit from. Doubt attacks the very pillars of authoritarianism. It’s part of why they use fear so much. Fear erases doubt-- if you are a proverbial mother guarding her family, then you cannot afford to doubt, and the seeds of doubt withdraw. If an authoritarian can whip up a threat (Jews, Antifa) and offer themselves as the salvation (Only I can fix it) then it erases doubt in the cause. It is also part of the reason why they are constantly at war-- war provokes fear, which makes the choice stark and simple, which causes doubt to withdraw.
But every cause has flaws. And authoritarianism of all stripes doubly so. Fear is a powerful motivator, but most of us cannot tolerate it being active for long. We have many other systems that motivate our actions, and for most of us they will activate eventually-- our consciences, our centers of love and beauty, our capacity to hope and dream, our love for others, our dedication and devotion to good causes-- Authoritarianism then has to find ways to combat those systems. Sometimes it succeeds, most often it doesn’t. The Thousand Year Reich lasted twelve.
We shouldn’t fear doubt. Used properly it is an effective tool to protect us from error, deception and the machinations of power seekers. We should be conscious of how we use it, of course, but we don’t give ourselves enough credit. There are few belief systems completely lacking in validity or truth. Every single one has some kernel, some nugget of wisdom on which a crystal of much greater beauty can germinate. Our consciences, our centers of love and beauty, our capacity to hope and dream, our love for others, our dedication and devotion to good causes-- they all predicate on the ability to unleash the acids of doubt on inferior materials. This cannot happen if we fear doubt.
Doubt, like so many other psychological mechanisms, is a very effective tool if we know how to use it. Put on your gloves and pour the drano down the sink. You’ll find the water flows better.
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