Many say it is of vital importance to hold true to your beliefs. Belief is a concept that is central to “being human”. I would like to suggest that it is more important to have doubts. That Doubt is not so much central to “being” as to “becoming”.
Without Doubt – without Uncertainty – there is no reason to learn – no reason to improve – no reason to seek knowledge. Absolute absence of doubt means that you “know it all” – only the absence of that certainty will trigger a search for a better understanding.
Fortunately, most people have doubts. Unfortunately, doubt is often treated as a negative characteristic. This leads to Doubt getting a bit of a bad press. So – most people are harbouring doubts and thinking that is a bad thing. Now it is certainly true that some doubts are unhelpful – but possibly less so than some “certainties”. There is – I would suggest – very little about which we can really be 100% certain – we can get close – but ONLY about what we have experienced – not about what we will (or might) experience.
When we start looking at the past we come up against the difficulty of separating reality from fantasy – as I have written about before. The further in the past something is, the less we can be certain about it. I can be reasonably certain that once I write this I will publish it in my blog – but even there a small doubt can creep in – it is certainly not 100% certain!!!
So – Doubt as a necessary condition for self development – seems like the start of a new series of articles on here (but I can’t be sure…)