How to face the Uncertainty: Be Ethical

I used to live out the philosophy of Rene Descartes. As a Cartesian follower, I always wanted to be sure that I had the correct way of thinking about things that are fundamentally important. It was not enough that I had the right statements about the status of things. It was important that the way I think, the way I thought about them must also be true.

What appears as the truth could be false. What if my premises and assumptions about the world are false? What if I was not aware of their falsehoods and sincerely believed in them? I would then be made to believe that a conclusion logically arrived at from these false premisses is true, when in fact it is horribly false.

In other words, I wanted to know "How do I know that what I know is true?" and "How would I know that how I know is the truth?

Like myself, Rene Descartes was afraid of uncertainty.

Being uncertain about anything is a scary thing. Being uncertain about your relationship with the significant other can drive you crazy. And, being uncertain about your future can be disastrous and make you want to become a pleasure seeker. But, being afraid to face the Uncertainty is the scariest of them all.

You could do the opposite of what Descartes yearned for, and be careless and unmindful. Either way, it's the same attitude towards the Uncertainty: it hides itself from facing the Uncertainty. Uncertainty is here to stay. That is for sure. The reality is that no one can know for certain of anything, even if he plans to be sure.

Yet, I think there is a way to deal with the Uncertainty. However it is not by way of epistemology or the study of knowledge. I think the proper way of dealing with, facing, and embracing the Uncertainty of life is to develop a moral character.

Be morally truthful to yourself and to the other. Live as though there's no tomorrow. To live - and I don't mean just to survive - is to know what to die for. If you can stand firmly on moral grounds, then I think, you can face the inevitability of the Uncertainty any time. It is called death.