The Benefits of Doubting

by Madeleine Kando

Doubt has gotten a bad rap over the course of human history. It has become the whipping boy in the arsenal of our emotions. I am not sure why, because doubt has a lot going for it. In a fair fight, it would win over certainty any time. After all, it has to fight on two fronts in an argument. Like an immigrant worker, it toils away; doing the dirty work that certainty feels too superior to take on.

Here comes certainty strolling down the street, briefcase in hand, stuffed with opinions whose ink is barely dry, immune to all the ugly stares from opposing views, so full of itself, so overconfident. That’s what I hate about it, it’s just too damn sure of itself.

In fact, certainty has caused so much suffering in the world, that anyone with an iota of common sense, should avoid it like the plague. It’s like the bully in the schoolyard, justifying all manner of abuse in its name. Religious fanaticism, Nationalism, Terrorism, they all hysterically wave their respective flag emblazoned with these dreadful words ‘We are certain of our cause’.

Some people will argue that the advise of philosophers like Descartes who tell us to ‘doubt everything’, negates itself, since we should also doubt that advise. Actually, the only thing you cannot doubt is doubting, since that would still make you a doubt.

But doubt has a negative connotation in our culture of certitude. People who show doubt are the opposite of confident and strong. The US is a country of winners and losers. We admire charismatic politicians with absolute confidence in their opinions and intelligent politicians who change their minds on the basis of new evidence are called wishy washy or worse, dishonest and not trustworthy.

The origin of the word ‘doubt’ is the Latin word ‘dubitare’. It came to us via French (‘douter’), at which point it got rid of its ‘b’, both in speech and writing, but later was reinserted, when a bunch of smart people realized that the true meaning of ‘dubitare’ lay in another word ‘duplus’ which means ‘double’. So doubting really means that you see things from two points of view. That you are of two minds.

So where does ‘doubt’ stand on the spectrum between ‘certainty’ and ‘uncertainty’? In the left corner stands ‘certainty’, clearly the spectators’ favorite. In the right corner is ‘uncertainty’, fully confident that it will win the match, since a lot more things are uncertain in life. In order for the fight to be fair, we have pumped certainty full of performance enhancing drugs and tied uncertainties hands behind its back.

It’s not easy for me to let go of certainty, the notion that my convictions might not be correct. There is a lot of work involved in doubting and with all these people around me and on Facebook confirming how right I am, I don’t even consider the possibility that there might be an alternative view.

Scientists always express their ideas in terms of uncertainty. When the Higgs Boson particle was discovered, scientists said: “We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma”. 5 Sigma means that there’s a 1 in 3.5million chance that the discovery was wrong.

But doubting is not the same as being ambivalent. The official definition of ambivalence is ‘having conflicting feelings toward something or someone.’ It means "sitting on the fence", not knowing which side to choose. Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined the word ‘ambivalence’ in 1911 in his work with Schizophrenics. He takes a rose as an example: 'the normal person loves the rose despite its thorns. The schizophrenic loves the rose because of its beauty and at the same time detests it because of its thorns.'

In the Middle Ages men were very ambivalent towards women. Although misoginy was at an all-time high, in the cult of chivalry, men saw themselves as beings with pure souls who were morally superior to women, but the problem was that they also wanted sex. Hence they were ambivalent towards women.

The word 'ambivalence' comes from the Latin prefix ambi- (on both sides) and 'valentia' (vigor, to be strong). So, it means to be strong on both sides. Doesn't that sound a lot better than 'not being able to choose?' The root of this verb, val- refers to strength, and is found in words like valor, valid, and value, all positive words. So even though I am ambivalent about getting older, I have no doubts about it being a fact.

Many trump supporters were ambivalent about Clinton, meaning they didn’t ‘trust’ her, which actually made their decision to vote for Trump easier. Their ambivalence towards Clinton reduced their doubts about Trump.

Can you imagine if statements like 'what if ', 'let me think on it' or 'it depends on' didn't exist? Doubt is what makes it possible to live in a world full of contradictions, ups and downs, good and bad and life and death. It gives us a tool to examine, contemplate, rethink, take a breath. It ultimately allows us to choose correctly, no doubt about it. leave comment here