Why is “I Don’t Know” So Hard
Why is “I don’t know” so hard?
I am by my nature a skeptic, but not nearly as much as I should be. When I hear a bit of news I generally ask a few questions like;, How do they know this; How CAN they know this; What are they not telling me; What do they want to be true, and, to account for my own biases, what do I want to be true?
As a skeptic, when I ask these question I try to separate what is known from what is spun or conjectured, or just a plain lie. I try to separate pseudoscience, like the models for so-called climate change for example, and reasonably dependable facts. Those facts include, not only what I see with my own eyes but also reality.
Reality is important to me because it allows entrance into my thinking things like, if you jump off of a cliff everything will be just fine for a little while depending on how high the cliff is. Or, you can run up debt and be just fine until someone knocks on the door demanding payment. Or, you can tolerate baby-killing for just so long before you incur God’s wrath. Or, you can indoctrinate masses of people into blindly worshiping the government as an all-knowing, all-powerful god capable of controlling the planet’s temperature; arbitrating right and wrong, running interference between man’s depravity and the consequences of that depravity; and ensuring peace, prosperity and libertine freedoms for every single individual regardless of their choices, for only so long before the masses actually believes that it is only self-evident that such is the truth.
Another reality is that, my own pride be damned, mankind by its nature has a herd mentality and we trust our shepherds. So, as reality dictates, the only real question we have to ask ourselves is not whether or not we are sheep, but who is our shepherd. Man’s pride rejects this notion, of course. We say because we are not in that flock over there, we are not in a flock. But we are. We are designed to be. It’s reality.
At the root of it all is the question of questions. What do I actually know for certain? This comes with ancillary questions like, what have I been programmed to “know”? And how can I cut through the fog of ignorance which is the reality of my state of being?
For beginners, I begin with admitting that I don’t know. I also must admit that neither do most others, even the experts, and even if those experts do know more than most about some particular things. An epidemiologist, for example, may know a whole lot about epidemics but very little about economics, or the trials of living in poverty while forced to not work.
I must also understand man’s herd mentality and how easy it is to just go with the flow of my particular heard. In the end, the way I see it however, I must be a skeptic, and more so with what my heard is telling me than what the world’s folly happens to be saying at a given time.
In conclusion, I must, as all others must too, fall back on faith. In the end, all people, even the devout atheists, live by faith. Some have faith that when they die they will be dead and will not be held accountable for the life they’ve lived. Some have faith in mankind, if only mankind could somehow rid itself of the silly notion of a creator and relish… no, not relish but worship our differences, as in diversity, and the whole world could just, as John Lenin put it, live as one. There’s a slew of other faiths, some of which I find myself allied with and others which I find myself in fierce opposition to. As for me, I have put my faith in a God who has revealed himself in the same scripture that he has also been big enough to superintend through the ages. I must admit that I am but a tiny island of knowledge in a vast ocean of ignorance, but also that I have God-given eyeballs, a brain, and God’s revelation in order that I, a sheep in His flock, am able to hear my shepherd’s call, and am able to run when the imposter comes.
Cross Streets 