Certainty

There is one thing about which I hold myself certain. One thing I consider inviolable truth. It is that certainty is poison to the human spirit. The more certain you are of something the less human you become. Witness fundamentalism everywhere.

If you are certain of something then that is something that you must do your utmost to inject doubt into. Examine under the light of many worlds, consider it as the ancient Persian would both drunk and sober, include as many more altered states as your lifestyle allows, consider whether you would believe the same if your moral basis were built upon something else. Perform experiments, physical or social as necessary, to test your understanding and the veracity of your certainty and keep notes. Make it impossible for yourself to ignore the edges of your certainty where logic or fact tells you otherwise. Because once you refuse to allow yourself to see one small facet of reality you begin to blind yourself to all of it. And thence, by all measures of psychiatry, lies madness.

I have yet to find evidence that certainty in any thing does more good than harm. However while there are truths that lack contrary evidence there are no truths that merit certainty. I accept even my initial statement in this post as a poison, it poisons my ability to make statements unambiguously and it poisons my ability to trust in the things that people say. Frankly, that may be a good thing in some cases. I accept that one poison regardless but no further. No other certainty will I knowingly accept into my self.