10 April 2008

On "On trust and understanding"

I drafted a post one month ago call "On trust and understanding". It began...
The dichotomy between trust and understanding is new to me. I don't know when exactly I recognized it or by what prompt, but it swept through my thoughts as a unifying duality. You needn't trust something if you can instead understand it.

I recognized that I nearly always prefer to understand than to trust. I'm not religious. I'm hesitant to take advice. And I'm a skeptic and an empiricist – I consider the scientific method to be the best known recipe for true wisdom.
It ran real thin after that, so I stowed it. What I wrote put me in a dark place, hence The Silent Month (The Big Silence, Annie?). Now I'm cannibalizing that post in an attempt to liberate myself from myself (57"?). My favorite part comes after a break-neck discussion of moral skepticism, the futility of all prediction, and life goals.
So pick something and shoot for the stars, huh? What if I shoot for the stars and accidentally take out a jetliner full of infants? Or what if I become so committed to shooting for the stars that I wipe out an entire culture because I need their resources for my giant star laser?
That was for giggles, this is for my emotional blog photo.
I don't know what I am for. I don't know what humanity is for. I don't know where life or the universe came from. No one does. No one ever will. So I only permit myself to wonder about that stuff. How do people choose who or what to trust, anyway? They pick the one that makes them comfortable. Or maybe the one that positively challenges them. Whatever the reason, it comes from inside and inside alone and usually incurs a fair amount of close-mindedness thereafter.

It terrifies me what we sometimes do based on such a silly choice.
I still feel that way.

The heart of the problem actually occurred to me as I put aside "On trust and understanding" and wrote that Ben Stein rant instead. As the opening paragraph showed, I think the scientific method is pretty savvy. But I realized I trust it. I believe in it. I'd brushed that off before as "well, it's different," but now I can't look past it. Even the scientific method is turtles all the way down and that kills me - I thought I was standing on bedrock.

I had put Understanding on a pedestal only to realize I couldn't reach that high. I have principles, yes, but no reasons for them. Realizing that brings a lot of doubt and I'm still trying to choke it all down.

As far as I can tell, moral skepticism can't be directly denied; its biggest problem is its impracticality. Add in Hume's problem of induction and I've got quite the quarter-life quagmire. (That is a 24 Scrabble-point alliteration.)

I'm more lost in life than I've ever been; the ground is not real - there is no ground.

4 comments:

Katie Laird said...

beautiful.

hootenannie said...

Nick, I think that we're experiencing the same kind of darkness these days. Although we might see the world differently, I think that we are FEELING the same stuff. Thinking of you today - and um... I used "The Big Silence" in my latest (and last, at least for awhile) blog.

Adrienne said...

I just saw a film print of "2001." I'm assuming you've seen this. This was my second time. After the first time I engaged in some pretty heavy (and ultimately circular) conversation and pondering on the meaning of what I had just spent 3 hours of my life trying to decipher (giant fetus! hello!). This time around, I think I finally came to a conclusion I was happy with.

Who knows what Kubrick or Arthur C Clarke was thinking for sure, but I like to think it's this: that we don't really know anything. When it comes down to it, all technological leaps and scientific advances notwithstanding, we are still just the monkey men who have no idea what do to with a black monolith. All we can know is that we really can't know. Turtles, indeed.

Anonymous said...

Hai... Something happen to me yesterday and i am since then feel like.... I woke op this morning whit the same thought i went to bed whit, i went to work still draging whit the same thought....i sat down in mine office, started up mine pc and tipe in the woords "trust and understanding" and i read your collum i was and still am speach less. I will like to make a comment I am going to make part of this world for many many more years more......strange but i got an answer on one of mine questions!!!!