doubt

Academically and professionally, I have been taught to understand the world as fundamentally stochastic. People often underestimate the amount of randomness that drives nearly every human process, be it physical or social. We make decisions under uncertainty every day, and this is something that most people are intuitively comfortable with. At times, we can convince ourselves that some situation is effectively deterministic, by ignoring a small probability to the contrary. Perhaps most confounding: in situations where our sample consists of only a single observation of the event in question, who is to say?

I have been thinking recently about the feuding cousins called doubt and faith. Doubt seems a natural consequence of an uncertain world, and I've found faith to be an elusive way to deny probabilistic realities. The truth is, for all my textbook exhortations, I often struggle to live under uncertainty. To make decisions and take steps that, given what I know, should be obvious. I've found it difficult to overcome doubt. This in spite of a firm intellectual understanding that one never has perfect information with which to move forward. Enter faith. I bristled the other day when somebody advised me about a problem I'd been having, to "have faith and it will turn out fine in the end." What gives strength to this kind of a phrase, and on what authority can this really ease my worries? We all know that things don't always turn out fine in the end. Some situations go well, and others go poorly. I can't reasonably take solace here.

Yet this is hardly an argument for paralysis in the face of doubt and uncertainty. Rather, the very sense of reason that causes me to reject the 'faith formulation,' should itself instruct against any tendency to seize up. Ultimately, we have to live and confront challenges with the understanding that while uncertainty and doubt will persist, the best we can do is to act in accordance with the best information we have. Sometimes this means using reason and common sense to mount a violent rejection of one's own irrational tendencies. At other times, quieting the voices that amplify deep-seated fears that threaten to debilitate. We have to move on.