Journal VI: Doubt
I have written this piece throughout a space of undisclosed emotional turmoil. I’ve a bad habit for being what I’ve referred to as “emotionally adventurous,” but this is merely stand-in terminology for what I really am: Hopeless. I am a coward, often dreaming without action and moving without imagination. I am forlorn and unrequited, an enemy of emptiness and a harbinger of heartache. Something there is in me that fails to apprehend my own truth, yet I persist; for, I doubt.
When Descartes put forth: “Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum1,” (I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.") he was referring to a philosophy of the mind and attempting to offer a means of ascertaining truth beyond certainty. It’s a whole thing in philosophy—as I’m sure you know, Sweet Reader. When I first came to understand this idea, I recognized a deep wisdom therein. Doubt is a vile friend to us. We are all victims and acolytes of doubt by turns. Lately, I have been a victim.
Doubt has its uses, truly. It is one of the most valuable functions of thought we possess, and we would do well to apply it more often to our sense of reality—and less often to our sense of self. Taking things at face-value, finding comfort in false security and mislaid trust, is to deny one’s greater instinct as a member of the human species. We’ve been given a deep gift of uncertainty—of doubt—that can guide us beyond mere storytelling and into true insight. Doubt permits us to exceed narrative and grasp true awareness, even if at the expense of our sense of understanding. To understand is valuable in its own right, but sometimes it is more useful to accept that some things are incomprehensible. Zen masters know this. Doubt becomes us.
There is another side of this coin, of course, and it is a side that more often lands up lately: cynicism. The practice has its uses, but I feel cynicism is boorish when applied to all the world. It is unfortunate. Cynicism certainly has inherent value in thought and so when I see cynics who practice their doubt like dogma it is a real shame to me. I think the use is best applied in moderation, as with all other philosophy. There’s no honour in a doubt given too great a freedom over perception. One must temper their tools, to learn to use them wisely and not to rely too much on one over another. This is a struggle, surely, but not an impossible or hopeless ambition. Diversity is a good practice. Nature knows this.
I fear it is cynicism taken too far that is often doubt taken too far. It holds one back from the wisdom of doubt, the deeper practice of uncertainty. Nothing is permanent, and so it is awfully reasonable to exercise great uncertainty, but one cannot become lost in a sea of disillusion or one is not truly engaging with the ephemera of existence—indeed, one distances their mind from truth this way. Doubt, if anything, should be the centre that binds the spokes of one’s philosophies, around which our perception is ever turning. This is why Daoism is of deep value to me as a thinker: it specifically invites followers to doubt its precepts. The opening line of Daodejing can be translated: “Dao called Dao is not Dao.” This is perhaps the most honest and greatest opening line of any text we have. It warns us from the start: Doubt this.
I am fortunate to have tripped down a path of philosophical understanding that gave me the freedom to engage openly with ideas and to doubt them simultaneously. Nothing should be taken for granted and all things out to be granted a bit of nothing. It is worth noting that despite his precept of doubt, Descartes remained a faithful follower of God, and that Laozi, the writer of Daodejing, likely never existed. Doubt is a practice one applies to the everyday, the phenomenal and the mundane. We should consider this; or, at the least, we should consider why we shouldn’t consider this.
As for myself, I am a romantic who rallies against romanticism. I should doubt far more than I do and yet far less but instead find a cold comfort in the certainty of my own ambition, all the while struggling to attain such lofty visions. This is Absurd, I think, and that is best left for commentary in another Journal. I will work now to facilitate some small doubt in my garden, to bloom some flower of skepticism towards my own ends. Mind-willing, I will find some solace in the uncertainty of tomorrow and tomorrow.
In the meanwhile, I hope you’ve had a good week. Thank you for visiting.
As paraphrased by Antoine Léonard Thomas.