We need doubt
Undoubtedly
Like many in recent weeks, I’ve been reading the news a lot, perhaps too much, to the point that I’ve been thoroughly disturbed by the apocalyptic undertones of the Iran conflict. It’s a long standing fact that Iran is a hardline theocracy whose supreme leaders have for generations now been proclaiming “death to the Great Satan (the US) and its henchmen (i.e. Israel).” So foreign to me is the place and culture of Iran that while I marvel at it, I do so from afar.
It’s the prospect of American Christian theocracy that really has me disturbed. I think about friends and acquaintances from my times living and working in the US—Christians and non-Christians, Republicans and Democrats—and I wonder what they’re all thinking. I knew a couple of guys from a Christian summer camp I worked at when I was 18 who were fresh into the marines. Are they still there? Do they believe the war in Iran is going to unleash the fire of armageddon that will usher in Christ’s return? It beggars belief.
What shocks me most, and sits quite close to home as someone who grew up in the Christian tradition and still has a lot of love for aspects of it, is the brazen certainty with which these lunatics—from Hegseth to Netanyahu to Khamenei—hold to their beliefs.
It strikes me as dangerous for a society that requires some degree of empathy to function that anyone should hold firm beliefs about anything that can’t be proven.
Of course you could tie me up in a neat little knot with that assertion because it is itself a firm belief without irrefutable proof. But what I really mean to say—and here I hold true to my name—is that doubt is the treasure of existence.
Doubt creates room in the heart. Doubt makes space for us to encounter the unknown, the unforeseen, the limits of our minds. Doubt pierces our rigid beliefs, renders us pliable and free. One way we could define freedom is the ability to encounter the world as it truly is. One is locked in a cage if one cannot regard the other with respect or dignity because of one’s beliefs. One is stripped of agency if one fervently believes we are on a runaway train to the apocalypse.
Doubt has sown the seeds of every great leap in human history. It is doubt that enables the boy to say “look, the Emperor has no clothes”. It was doubt that brought about universal suffrage, that empowered slaves to revolt, brought down monarchs and ended apartheid. Doubting the system, doubting the conventional wisdom, doubting the beliefs that limit our ability to simply be with reality as it is: the green trees, the falling snow, the warm fire, the roaring sea, the twittering birds, the humming jungle, the piercing eyes of a cat, the smell of freshly cooked rice, the taste of butter, the hug of a mother, the quizzing of a child, the burble of a baby.
Life is really not that complicated: a place to sleep, water to drink, food to eat, companionship and a beautiful sunrise should be enough to satisfy. And I believe most ordinary people of America, Iran, Israel, wherever could be pretty happy with that, so why do we create so much suffering? It is our firmly held beliefs, in principalities and powers in realms no one can point to, in the supremacy of white skin, in the necessity of wealth, in the scarcity of resources, which send us out of paradise and into hell. Little do we know it is a hell of our own design and the kingdom of heaven was here all along, making a meek rustling noise like a breeze stirring leaves. But our fantasies of being the strong man fill our ears with the noise of battle and on we charge.
I speak not only of the need for doubt in matters of religion and politics, but in medicine and science, in education, economics, investing and agriculture: we are better off, always, if we surrender the lust of certainty and engage authentically in what David Whyte calls “the vital conversation”: the state of being where what’s going on inside the head is in honest dialogue with what’s outside it. It is no coincidence that religious fervour leads to violence: one is at war with the world the moment one decides what is inside the head is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
In these hyper masculine times, as the masculine in all of us—male, female, non-binary, whatever—fights fearfully against the rising feminine and its implications of softness, uncertainty and flow, we must see that clinging to certainty is fruitless, that our quest for control merely ushers forth the only certainty we all live with: our ending
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