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.

Philosophical Cause Of Suffering and Injustice

When you adopt a certain way of making sense of reality, you stick to it as long as you can.  There may be several notions of truth about the self and life in general. But, you have chosen to believe in a certain notion of truth. Why? Because it is your need to believe that there is only one way of making sense of yourself and the world. It is comfortable. It protects you from certain beliefs that you can't get yourself to accept. They cause great discomfort when the world won't agree with your understanding of how the world should be.

This is your understanding of what reality is, what your place is in this world, how the other should relate to you, how you relate to your joys and fears. Seriously questioning your understanding is almost as good as giving up on life. For some, they decide to end their lives.

I think that the most destructive way of thinking about yourself and the world is to place yourself as the center of Reality. In this scenario, you are the arbiter of what is true and what is false, what is good and what is wrong. I am not just talking about being selfish. I am referring to a kind of thinking that runs so deep that it is very hard to notice that you have actually promoted yourself to being the center of reality.

Take for instance the philosophy of Rene Descartes. Descartes was looking for the truth. In fact he was yearning for something that was beyond absolute doubt. During his investigation, he doubted the senses and anything that the senses tell him about the world. He doubted God’s existence and morality (eventually, he was able to restore God in his philosophy). He doubted science. There was, however, one thing that he couldn’t doubt. And that was his existence. The fact that he is thinking, he exists. The fact that he exists, he is thinking. His existence and as a thinking thing were so intertwined, like inseparable Siamese twins, that neither of them could exist without the other. What sort of thinking did he believe defined his existence? It was reason. Or the way he understood reason: whatever rational arguments or conclusions he formed, they must first and foremost satisfy and comfort his self. They must keep him protected from further confusion, doubt, discomfort. That is, whatever he undertakes to understand, ‘it’ must make sense to him. If ‘it’ cannot acquiesce to his way of understanding things, then ‘it’ will be discarded. ‘It’ will be treated as though it is irrational, worse, false.

Let us step back from this scenario, and ask these important questions:

• Is it fair to force reality to make sense to you? 
• Just because something does not make sense to you, is it fair to say that it is false or morally wrong? 
• If you always want to see your partner not as he or she is, but as what he or she is for you, is that fair? 
• Just because it is logical for you, but not logical for the other, is it fair to judge him or her as being wrong and hard headed?