Certainty is a Trick

After watching the movie "Doubt," I thought about some of the ingredients that make that film so intriguing and interesting. The manner in which it was redesigned from the play version is wonderful and new emphasis can be found due to that effort. Yet, it was not the existence and power of doubt that finally held my after viewing thoughts. It was not the issue of priestly abuse of minors which is a personal topic of pain. It was not the re-seeing of the world in which I grew or failed to grow. It was not even seeing the world of my parents and grandparents. The issue that I cannot shake today is certainty.

The search for certainty has focused the attention of philosophers, religiositors, mathematicians and even medicine throughout the recorded histories that I have learned. Yet,
is there ever certainty? Is certainty about anything possible? Descartes tried to find certainties. Most know the statement attributed to him, "Cogito, ergo, sum." However not as many are familiar with his revision which he actually called his first certainty, "I think, I exist." Playing with that rephrase in the mind can lead one to understand how so many great thinkers in all disciplines and religions have gone nearly mad trying to discover or decide if there is certainty. Yet is that the important question?

Since it is more likely that certainty is an emotion, like other emotions, it will have its ebbs and flows throughout life. I may have one certainty - People who say they are certain about something or some dogma or faith path either block emotional channels to hold that certainty or they transfer the pain of their doubt into outward behaviors that can often be harmful to self or others. Since we do not want to or cannot look at the world where some other idea/dogma but ours is true, we must destroy, denounce, or ignore that other view. Otherwise, as the Irish poet wrote the center will not hold.

It is interesting how powerful this need for certainty is for people. The generation which preceded mine and the one that preceded that one had great need for certainty because the threats and changes that took place in their lifetimes were perhaps the most extreme of all history. Of course, I am referring to the generations of my parents and grandparents. The grandparents were born into a world which mechanical engines were just being fully mastered. Communications would go from a letter delivered over a period of days or weeks to instantaneous communications over wires and airwaves. Travel would move from primarily animal and foot based to air, rail and tire. Economies would intertwine and crumble in larger and larger circles beyond the control of individuals or families.

The children, my parents, would live in a world where the world actually did go to war twice, and each time it did, the results were worse - less certainty. They were born during or affected by a worldwide plague of huge proportions which created fears regarding illness and death for their parents and themselves for a lifetime. A world wide economic depression would change beliefs and shake all certainties about work, careers, and the future for everyone. The parents fought and some died or were scarred for life in the war to end all wars, and the children fought, died and were maimed in the great crusade against evil totalitarianism. Yet, nothing gave certainty. So at the same time as all of the great upheavals, religious certainty began to fill the void and soothe the pain of a need for certainty. The various manifestations of religious certainty had been brewing for centuries, but they had become especially energized as reactions to the "modern world". The churches, temples, mosques "like the all-wise and all-caring states" were supposed to restore the certainty that had been ripped. Did they?

As in "Doubt," I am sure that some of the people who made their way to mass and the bakery each Sunday felt comfortable in the predictability of no change. Perhaps, that seemed like certainty. There is too much evidence in the people whom I remember, the literature of the time and the truths that were not to be shown the light of day to say that all or any did have certainty. An example from literature of the time is from a popular novel made into a movie called, "The Cardinal." That novel was as much about uncertainty/doubt as is the film that stimulated this writing. It was just relayed in the symbols and allowable language of the times.

One choice in the novel as an example shows the pain between the demands for religious certainty and our experiences as humans. The focal character is a priest. His sister gets pregnant outside of marriage. She has a difficult delivery with a complication that calls for a decision between the fetus or the mother - the priest's sister. Dogma tells the priest that he must choose the fetus. The choice is made; the sister dies. Years later when the priest is the cardinal in Rome, there is a beautiful young niece to help him feel that his choice was favorable to god. Do his doubts end? Did he ever have certainty? While the trappings of church and robes and position seem to say yes, it never feels quite true until he acts against the ruling/advice of his superiors and his church to rescue people from totalitarian harm.

So while the churches seemed to offer certainty the same way that dress codes in schools and the workplace did, the certainty of the times of my parents and grandparents was as superficial as the suits and hats at IBM. So much of it crumbled when the tools of the past were used but no longer supplied the certainty and feeling of unity that they once had. War did not unite us in the Vietnam era. Segregation and gradualism did not hold. A trustable government did not answer Watergate. And hoping it never happened did not stop the pain of clergy abuse, racism and homophobia. Hate could only give certainty when the people who were hated did not live among us. When some stood up and spoke out about the lies and facades that were supposed to protect certainty, the crumbling began. Doubt was on the loose again.

I hope to revisit this topic from time to time because it helps me to understand better who I am and why my search for certainty was never the needed search.