The World is an Obtuse Angle









2 thoughts on “The World is an Obtuse Angle

  1. Good post, although I have to disagree. You say the doubting game is much easier to play than the believing game. I think it’s just the opposite. We have too much belief and not enough doubt. Doubt might make us, say, examine our presidential candidates’ statements before voting. I don’t mean doubt as you describe it, which sounds to me more like belief in the negative, I mean doubt as foregoing certainty until you can examine the premise from different angles, poke at it to see if there are any holes, field test it, if possible. Sure, when X says something and Y says “I doubt it” that is just another “no, it’s not.”. That’s not doubt. Doubt is “maybe … let’s think this through”. Couldn’t we use a little more of this kind of doubt? I’ll go farther. Don’t you need doubt to have faith? It could be religious faith or faith in a premise. Faith is not belief, believing without doubt is just an inactive mind. It is only through doubting, examining, testing that you arrive at faith. Sounds like science, but it is equally true for matters politic, or of the heart.


    • I’m a skeptic by nature, and doubt is part of my makeup. Science cannot proceed without it, of course. Belief is harder, I think, because you have to turn off that “yeah, but” muscle that is always working. At least that’s the case for me. I liken it to listening. We have (or at least I do) this massive urge to but in and say “well, I think” when the right thing to do is keep silent and suspend disbelief and let the speaker spin their web. How often do we actually get inside someone else’s head and feel what they are saying instead of simply viewing it as a counterpoint to what we think? Argument is more highly valued by scholars, but too often it involves one side “winning” over the other. Does the “loser” change his mind? I don’t know. Seems to me a good argument is one that opens another’s mind and allows them to see things in a new way. That requires empathy, which is an act of faith, a belief that another person has something valid or meaningful to say due to the uniqueness of their makeup and/or experience. I suppose I learn best these days by asking fewer questions, unlike the young me who was always questioning things.


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