On Doubts

I have always had doubts, doubts on myself, doubts on facts, doubts on what others tell me, doubts on whether I had correctly heard others, correctly interpreted their thoughts, on what people would think if I told what I thought.... Doubts always gave an inferior feeling, especially when your neighbors do not ask them. For a long time, I thought that certainty was the way of the world, the firm rule that governs the existence in a perfect manner.

But as Voltaire once put forth, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one." , it is indeed Doubt and uncertainty that have driven the world over the years. A simple argument would prove this. If there were no doubts, we would have never progressed beyond the fences of prejudices and wild belief into the domains of logical reasoning and science.

Necessity, we say is the mother of invention. What is necessity? A feeling of discomfort that forces the dissatisfied mind to seek something new, something proper. "Dissatisfied and Discomfort " are the keys here, that fire up the inert human will and spurs it to great heights. Every great invention in human history, without exception has in its roots some kind of Dissatisfaction and discomfort. On close observation, we find these very emotions ( rather States of mind ) produced by "doubts" too. This, seems to me, the most evident and an common-place proof that human mind is still evolving, and for the better.

I am 21, and I have neither the experience nor the knowledge to speak on philosophy and human intelligence, but one singular pattern that I have noticed in myself and others around me is the inverse correlation of the No. of Doubts asked with age. For some reason, I think we ( including me) tend to correlate knowledge with age, and feel awkward to expose our ignorance. This tendency increases with age and sadly it results in the decrease of our learning capability.

Have you ever observed a child? Almost 90% of its waking time is spent in observation, assimilation, classification, hypothesis building ( through imagination) and its verification ( through doubts) and correction. It is no wonder then that a child is the best learner and the best scientist. We were all great scientists at birth, and all through our childhood, without ever having to see the principles of Science written on the back page of the textbooks. It fills me with a strange pride and awe, to think how I ever managed to learn the English and the Hindi alphabet. Strange symbols, associated with something totally unfamiliar(like X for Xylophone, Y for Yatch and Z for Zebra .. i haven't seen the last 2 till date )... Maybe our brain is molded so, but then its also possible that our conscious mind, with its growing influence with age and experience, does play an important part in suppressing our doubts, and effectively preventing ( or at best, reducing the pace of) our learning, creativity and questioning prowess.

One might argue that age is a condition of the mind. Very true. Those who have preserved the child within, from the wild temptations of distractions, peer pressure and social status, have often, seemingly miraculously succeeded in finding something of greatest value. Cliched though, a few examples could demonstrate this: "What was great in a falling apple?" , "Why should one risk one's life telling that the sun was the center of the solar system?", "Why should anybody bother with a thing called search when the domain is not fixed, and ever-changing?", "How did a person ever expect a thing called Wikipedia work, based on philanthropic( remember "Time is money") contributions, whilst Economic theory teaches us that the self-interest guides all activity?" Each instance demonstrates a child-like dream, initially full of uncertainty, but powered by determination and backed by the will of someone who was too stubborn to be defeated.

I was once reprimanded severely ( by one of my favorite Profs) at college for taking the words of the books for granted. I guess I understand his point now. Instead of ignoring OR feeling uneasy about our doubts, all we need to do is to respect and cherish them, for they will be the seeds which will give birth to a higher, more advanced ( and hopefully better) level of ignorance. After all, Steve Jobs had a point when he exclaimed , " Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish ".


PS: I am not an avid blogger... and the above just represents my flow of thoughts, sometimes random, sometimes irrelevant. I'll be glad to receive any feedback to improve.