I have been intending to return to the subject of people who are utterly certain, and why it is that such people bother me. And then my daily paper contains this gem on a very topical subject:
What makes such a transition psychologically possible for Mr Obama is his easy admission of self-doubt. It was there in his book Dreams from My Father, when he recalled dealing with a pair of white-blaming Chicago pols in his community activist days. “Both Marty and Smalls,” he wrote, “knew that in politics, like religion, power lay in certainty - and that one man's certainty threatens another's. I realised then that I was a heretic. Or worse - for even a heretic must believe in something, if nothing more than the truth of his own doubt.” So Mr Obama doubted the truth of his own doubt, yet obviously didn't find his uncertainty crippling. “You seem like you know what you're doing,” another activist tells him. He replies: “I don't, Mona. I don't have a clue.” That doubt creates a space. The Times 20/01/09
I could turn that around (although maybe with recent brethren history I shouldn't need to) and say that in religion, like politics, power lies in certainty. It is as though the need to expend an effort of belief on something which cannot by proved by reasonable means is a measure of virtue. Nobody admires a person who can lift a helium balloon because it lifts itself, but they do admire a person who can lift a heavy weight. In the same way, admiration seems due to people who most powerfully believe something without facts to back it up.
But personally I like the notion of doubt creating a space. People who claim to have no doubt instantly raise a kind of irritation in me - it feels as though they are confessing to a disability with no clue that it is a disability, more that it is something that sets them apart as superior. Lack of doubt limits one's freedom, just as lack of mobility in a limb does. That aspect of a person is then unable to move.
I suppose that difference of viewpoint is the crux of it. If such true believers didn't think themselves better than others, they wouldn't annoy me. And, come to think of it, it doesn't only apply to religion and politics, either. I'm pretty tolerant in most respects, but people with a touch of arrogance because of something they value but I don't do tend to provoke me to dislike.
Still, returning to that quote, I find it very encouraging that others can see the benefits of a non-fixed view. And the specifics of the person with those values gives me a little hope for the future.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I like this post. It touches on a question I struggled with for a long time. The question is what to do with the baggage that accumulated during my years in the brethren. Was the earth really created 4500 odd years ago, as Darby maintains or is the universe really 13+ billion years old? Is the Bible really the 'Word of God' or is it a collection of stories, legends and poetry collected over centuries, heavily edited at various times along the way:
When I became comfortable with the "I don't know" answer to these questions, I found that space you describe. I'm free to examine the evidence and to make up my own mind. There is no particular urgency about finding answers because I know that unequivocal answers cannot be produced.
Such certainty as you describe is only important to people because they are told and re-told that it is important. When I was able to turn off the flow of words and gain time to reflect on them, I found them unpersuasive. However, I am embarrassed to admit how many years went by before I let go of the creation myth.
Total certainty is only for people with closed minds, and for people who have to feign certainty in order to influence their followers. But a closed mind is a great handicap, because it makes learning difficult, and a feigned certainty is an uncomfortable encumbrance for anyone with an honest disposition.
It is hard to find anything at all in this world that is totally certain. Mathematical truths perhaps come nearest to it, but even they are slightly doubtful.
Uncertainty, by contrast, is liberating. Bertrand Russell said something to the effect that while it leaves us unable to tell what is the true answer to the questions it raises, it suggests many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our confidence as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder.
Post a Comment