Skepticism

The other day I was driving in the rain on one of those Illinois highways that seems to have no beginning and no end, and I realized that my windshield wipers were going bad. The water was smearing and sloshing around, blurring everything in front of me, and even though there were few cars on the road so far out into the corn, it was pretty terrifying. I slowed down a bit, took a deep breath, and realized that it wasn’t as bad as it could be – even if my view wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t entirely obscured, and I could make my way if I was careful. As leaned into my steering wheel like the old man with bad eyesight I’m sure I will one day become, something was articulated in my mind that I had long known but had not fully come to terms with: I live every moment of my life largely confused at what’s happening around me.

Those who know me will be shrugging and nodding right about now, I’m sure. At least for me, however, it’s hard to come to grips with this possibility. But think for a moment about what you don’t and can’t know about your daily life. For example, it’s possible that tomorrow morning at 7:47 AM, right at the height of rush hour, you’ll be sitting in your car thinking about how you’re late again when the laws of physics as we know them will simply cease to function. Reality will suddenly bend into some incomprehensible shape, gravity will cease to exist, light will change speeds, and the universe as we know it might henceforth be something entirely different.

Now, that’s obviously highly improbable, but it’s not impossible. Keeping that sort of thing in mind, it’s apparent that nothing is impossible. Everything any human being has ever conceived throughout our existence and everything that we have not could all suddenly be true. I’m willing to bet that doctors and scientists around the world would argue with me and they would have an excellent point: there is no reason to believe that all of our knowledge is false simply because none of it is absolutely certain. I wouldn’t argue with them, either – the whole structure of our society and culture is built upon the notion that the world as we know it is inherently stable, and that point of view has worked for us so far.

Nonetheless, the possibilities are staggering. We believe that the sky will not fall only because we’ve been recording its failure to do so for the last four thousand years or so. But of course, the point here is not to argue that we know absolutely nothing (because, for one, how could I know that to argue it?) but rather to describe just how confused we are at the chaos around us. Even if we don’t like to believe it or even to think about it, we as human beings understand very little about what is happening to and around us. We make assumptions and postulates, compose theories and hypotheses that attempt to describe what our meager five senses perceive, but we have never and very possibly will never have at our disposal all the answers we require. Even the people we know best remain mysteries at times, and if you think that’s bad, try to understand your own motivations sometime.

In lieu of certainty, then, we fall back on our intelligence, that function of our minds which allows us to accurately decipher our sensory input, and wisdom, which allows us to make the best use out of what knowledge we have. We make our best judgements and take our best guesses, hoping our choices are the right ones. We make stands where we believe we should even when we’re not absolutely sure that we’re right because that is what we must do to be ourselves. This is the worst part for me; I want to be absolutely certain when I make my decisions, and will not be satisfied with anything less.

This means, unfortunately, that I am never quite satisfied. I will never have all the information, and knowing that omniscience would probably be a terrible fate does not make it any easier. It is a difficult thing to accept that logic will only take me so far, and even if everything I think and believe is valid, it still might not be correct. Given all this, I will continue to make my little assumptions and take my little stands and perceive my narrow view of the world with as broad a palette as I can.

Of course, a little bit of ignorance isn’t always such a bad thing. Remember what it was like to be a child? If what replaced all our mysteries from that era was so disappointing, think of how much we might be let down when we find out what really lies at the edge of the universe.

It’s just not within us to stop looking, however, no matter how futile or how dangerous. Seeing what’s down the road, after all, is what gets us home safely – and that, if nothing else, is a good reason to keep squinting into the darkness.