Humility - A path forward

I accidentally, with the help of Blogger, reverted a post back to draft and restored an earlier version of it, a blank paper, to be specific. Which is why I haven't been active. I'm writing this post very sporadically because a reoccurring thought popped up in my head and I felt like writing it down. Here goes.


"We wish to find the truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both." ~ Carl Sagan

To watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos is truly a journey. I especially like his view of spirituality as a human emotion, not contingent on a religious source. It is far more satisfying to challenge ourselves than to stay ignorant, he argues. Instead of reassuring fantasies, our source of spirituality could instead be the insights about the world and ourselves as revealed through science.

His work is a plead to humanity to grow up and finally learn about its place in the cosmos akin to a child finding out the truth about santa upon getting older. It may not be pleasant, but it is necessary. The road there is long, however and it requires something very special, humility.

We got the imagination part covered. Just imagine (hah :D) the reaction of aliens visiting Earth's different religious sects and hearing their provincial and anthropocentric beliefs. Skepticism is what we're lacking and for that we need humility. We are apes and thus carry an enormous evolutionary baggage. I've noticed in my daily interactions that humility is often overridden by more primitive drives. We don't back away from claims in an appropriate manner when proven wrong in order to save face. But why does this save face? By denying our fallibility we inflate our social standing and try to create the impression that we are mindful about what we say, this doesn't make any sense.

Surely someone who espouses self-criticism and strives to learn more about what is true, pure and beautiful will save more face because those things ultimately matter more than partaking in some social-game whose rules don't make any sense when examined more closely. We tend not to choose the wise path, instead we show ourselves to be ignorant AND unwise. This may stem from how we view our beliefs. If we believe something, we incorporate that belief into who we are. It becomes part of our identity. To have others challenge this can be painful. Even more so when we realize the error ourselves. We react as if we had been betrayed by our own brain. It had us convinced and let us down. Right about now we start to examine what had us convinced to begin with and instead of taking a more skeptical approach to sources in general, we show animosity toward that specific source which mislead us. "Cosmic occurrences simply lent us a very unfair subset of all critical facts.", we tell ourselves. The world had been unfair to us, anyone would've drawn the same conclusion, we rationalize. These might be the things running through our heads when trying to deal with a damaged ego, but instead of learning our lesson and changing how we approach claims - we often go back to making the same mistakes over and over.

Additionally, coming to the realization that we were foolish angers us and with anger comes righteousness. This serves to misdirect us further.

If we are dedicated however, our will to be skeptical will inevitably lead us scrutinize and reevaluate our positions on a number of issues to the point where this skeptical mindset has become part of how we think. We will always be susceptible to irrationality because we are human, but reason and clear thought is able to drastically reduce its ability to persuade us.

After one of these mental battles with myself I feel relieved. I feel free from my own mental shackles. In the beginning it may piss us off, but in the end it will set us free. It's okay to be wrong. Everyone is wrong from time to time. The important thing is to acknowledge it and reevaluate.

“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”  ~ Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan pointed out that science is more a way of thinking than it is a body of knowledge. To travel among the stars we must first become scientists in the way we think. That's what humanity needs to reach its full potential.



Feed your curiosity.