The Uncertainty of Certainty

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m sure of. I’ve discovered I’m not sure of much.

This isn’t just me being my usual, fabulous, self-effacing self. What started me on this course of ‘investigation’ into ‘what I think’ has been living with the primary process for over a year. All the inflated claims about what this person stands for and what that person stands for. How this person is fit to be President and how that person isn’t. How one person said something three years ago, but said something contradictory to that yesterday. What this person believes, versus what that person believes, and why one belief is ‘better’ than the other. And always, the seeking for explanations and the placing of blame.




There are certain behaviors and events which lead to certain other behaviors and events. That’s pretty much accepted. But cause and effect in the realm of human behavior is not static. If you slam on your brakes in front of me, I’m likely to react, but in what way? Not necessarily in the way the script in our heads might indicate. I could slam into you, or I could swerve to one side or the other to avoid hitting you, or I may have suspected you were going to brake suddenly, and been prepared for it by already easing onto my brakes and avoiding any contact with you whatever.

There’s certainly a range of outcomes when it comes to human behaviors. They involve many messy human beings with messy behaviors, messy reactions to them, and messy results. Some of the messy results are pleasing to some of us, and some are distasteful to many. But here’s what I will dare to state with a good degree of certainty: human discourse is not predictable.

But a lot of us comfort ourselves by thinking we know things we don’t know. Why is that? What does it really get us? The fact is, we urban beings are still very primitive beings. For one thing, we are fundamentally insecure. Those of us who take security in assumptions about human behavior or the course of human history are simply fooling ourselves. There’s no real security that we can predict what our friends, children, or partners are going to do at a given time. We think we know. We think we know, because we selectively ignore the times when we’re wrong. We forget the exceptions, and hold on tightly to the times we’re correct.

We’re also competitive. The highest competitive drive can result in death and destruction. If we happen to be correct about something, we just love to show it off. If we are incorrect, we downplay or justify it. Somehow, being correct is a big thing with us. But there really are very few instances when we can tell someone they have a correct or an incorrect feeling. To the contrary, there are as many ways to live as there are people living. And the only thing we can really do about it is to select who we allow into our own daily lives and who we don’t. If someone’s a lout, a slob, a liar, a show-off, a pouter, a complainer, too perky, too loud, a cheater, an insulter, a critic, a control-freak, a chaos-magnet, or even just boring, we have the freedom to arrange our lives so that we don’t have to deal with them if we don’t want to. But does that mean we are correct, and they are incorrect? No. The loud, mean, smelly people may be living the ultimate life. What do I know?




But, for some odd reason (probably having to do with natural selection, that task-master), we are under the delusion that we can judge the right way to live, or who’s correct about what, or what people are going to do when we do what we do first. And it’s a delusion. We have no clue. We comfort ourselves in the certainty that our closest friends, and even our partners, don’t have secrets. Don’t hide things. Don’t change.

Which brings me to what I ‘know’ about my feelings. If we would just admit that feeling has more to do with our decisions than reason does, we might make some progress. We are convinced that we have to hold on to feelings as though they are truth. That feelings will save us. That if we are good, moral, healthy people, we will honor all our feelings. I guess we have to ‘feel’ that way, because otherwise we’d be too scared to do anything. We’d realize there is no security this side of the grave, that we don’t know very much about ourselves, and that we are ultimately powerless. So, we have to hold on to feelings.

A few things based on feelings:

Love for a person who is mean to you
Knowing you’re a ‘good’ person
Belief in obeying the law
Knowing your sports team is more worthy than others
Greed
Belief in God
Bumper stickers
Fashion (art)
Nationalism

In these things, we follow our emotions, and don’t spend a lot of time examining whether facts or reason has anything to do with them. I’m not saying there aren’t good reasons for some of these feelings. Without greed, we might starve to death. Without fear of breaking the law, we might kill each other (I should just speak for myself). But the fact is, there’s no sound, evidence-based methodology underlying any of these, and countless more, human acts or emotions.

Having said all of this, I’m well aware that my readers’ natural tendency will be to assume I’m trying to say that emotion is wrong. That feelings are wrong, and that people who disagree with me about emotion being the driving motivation behind belief in God, interest in fashion, political conviction, or rooting for a favorite team—that those people are just ‘wrong’. I am not saying that at all. All I’m saying is that I’ve begun to really be aware that a lot of my strongly held opinions and kneejerk reactions are based upon feelings from the start. And if I find I can’t support them with sound evidence and reason, I might want to re-evaluate them. Because they are guiding my life.

Here's a small example: I feel that if a candidate criticizes another candidate’s wife for saying there were times she hasn’t been proud of America, then the other candidate should be allowed to talk about the first candidate’s wife’s stealing prescription drugs. I support this ‘feeling’ by saying that it’s only fair. I support this ‘feeling’ by saying that if one person’s wife is free game, the other person’s should be.

The fact is, neither wife has anything at all to do with her husband’s fitness to serve as President. And simply because some people are assuming they do, that doesn’t mean I’m good to go with my feelings that striking back is 'fair'.

Most of us wouldn’t look at it this way. They started it, we say. We have to defend ourselves, we say. It does burn me when people behave in what I feel is a trashy, demeaning way. But I can be angry about it without responding in kind. What someone says about Michele Obama has nothing to do with me. What DOES have to do with me is who I believe (based on feelings supported by research into facts of record) should be the leader of the free world, and why I think so and what I do about it.

Feelings are wonderful things, and they are what make life worth living. I’m not wishing to become a robot any time soon. But I do hope that I can try to be a little more humble. And to treat people well.


Next up: If it's a joke, how can it be mean?