From an early age on, I was thought that doubt was a bad thing. Yet, I did it a lot. I doubted the rules my parents wanted me to live by, the rules of society in general, the religious beliefs I was told were right, and later on even things like morals and taboos. In a way, I have always refused to accept anything just because other people said it was the right thing. Not that I was a rebel. I can honestly say I was a well behaved child, I had good grades at school, in fact I never stood out in any way. But my thoughts were mine and mine alone, although occasionally I did share them with my parents, which usually lead to violent discussions ending in "go to your room!".
Still I believe that doubting anything and everything is the way to go. The moment we accept anything as the absolute truth, as undoubtedly right.. is where we loose our autonomy as human beings. Take religion as an example. All the extreme believers, wether they believe in Allah, God, Jahweh or even Satan, make the same mistake: they accept their own truth as the truth, and reject everything else. What if they turn out to be wrong? Or even worse, what, if they are failing to see the bigger picture and in fact, all of them are right, but by rejecting all other religions, all of them are wrong, too? Why can't we just all agree on the simple basics, without turning them into any sort of dogma, and leave it at that?
We are being manipulated into accepting lots of truths, all the time. Without doubt. This is good, that is bad, why? because it just is. Well, I guess I am a very bad person, then. I had sex long before I ever got married, I was divorced twice, I left the church and went on a neverending quest to define my own spiritual beliefs. I have put people in hospital, and I will do so again without hesitation to defend myself or anyone I care about. I will kill and steal if I have to, and I define when I have to. I believe there are circumstances under which anything and everything is justified. I love my loved ones and I know they love me, but I don't take this as a given nor do I expect it to last forever. One day at a time. My body is pierced and tattooed and I like it that way. I make my own choices, and they are valid for this moment, but if circumstances change, tomorrow's choice may be quite different and I won't feel guilty or bad because of that.
In remaining fluid in our judgment and perceptions, we use the full potential of our tremendous brain. It also saves us lots of stress. Once you stop taking anything as a given and move to a more day to day type approach, you automatically stop worrying about most things. Not careless, just focussed on making the best of the only moment in time we have any influence on: now. Not rebellious, just out of the box. Doubt is a very useful thinking process. If there is one thing I don't doubt.. it's the benefit of doubt.
Fantastic! LOL. Nice one!
BeantwoordenVerwijderenI am beginning to understand why I like you so much :-)
It is a natural tendency in children to doubt and question anything and everything. When society has beaten and scared this tendency out of a person or suppressed it in order to make him conform to the norm, he is considered a "responsible adult".
Most of the rules of society and religious rules are based on that, somebody's say so, "It is so and don't question it.". That is why "faith" is the supreme requirement in any religion because Faith is the opposite of Doubt.
Two references that I'd like to mention, but cannot go into the details of (after all, it's your blog, I can't hog too much space), Arthur Hailey's novel Detective and Robert Heinlein's book - Orphans of the Sky. Both provide some good insights into faith and doubt.