4 ms·
I’m in my thirties, and I have a feeling the process of “growing up” is an ideological bell curve that goes something like: Youth: Extrovert certainty Young a
by hnarn 6y ago
I’m in my thirties, and I have a feeling the process of “growing up” is an ideological bell curve that goes something like:
Youth: Extrovert certainty
Young adulthood: Extrovert uncertainty
Adulthood: Introvert certainty
As you learn more about the world around you, you realize the younger you was far too idealistic and cock-sure about the causes and solutions to the problems around you. Being barraged with uncertainty, the obvious answer then becomes that there is really no truth, there’s only approximations we can reach through the Socratic method: but eventually you grow weary of this as well. Surely there must be good and evil in this world, and if it quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck.
Being dogmatic isn’t a good thing, and I try to keep an open mind: but what’s equally dangerous is subscribing to the ideology that there is no such thing as good and evil. There is, and most of us have known the difference since we were children. I think adulthood is about finding the courage to speak out, when useful and constructive, instead of hiding behind the comfort of relativism.
- chronofar 6y ago> Being barraged with uncertainty, the obvious answer then becomes that there is really no truth This is an extreme and absolutist conclusion. Feynman once said something to the tune of (paraphrasing): I have degrees of certainty about different things and there’s many things I don’t know anything about. This is not “no truth,” this is “no truth I should be 100% confident in.” > Surely there must be good and evil in the world I could not disagree more strongly. There are incentives, both genetic and societal. This does not mean we are resigned to relativism or an absence of truth, it means we are more enlightened about the factors that impose into our interaction than being subject to fanciful innate accusations.