The Path to an Open Mind
How healthy skepticism can lead to truth and freedom
“We must really strain our soul to be aware of our own fallibility.”
-Michel de Montaigne
Every day, we are presented with new facts and stories that purport to tell us how the world works. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not, but it nevertheless is presented to us on a daily basis. But yet, how do we work to determine what is true and false?
As the essayist and skeptic Michel de Montaigne has advised, we must first and foremost remind ourselves of the fact that we are all fallible.
We all have been told at some point to keep an open mind, to not rush to judgment, to think through something. But yet, once we know something, or believe we know something, we become entrenched in that knowledge, refusing to let go of it. It is not unheard of for us to believe that because we have knowledge in one area of life, we have knowledge in other areas of life. You see this today with people who become successful in a specific industry and then begin to believe they know more than specialists, experts, or strategists for another industry. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect at its finest, the over-estimation of our knowledge in a particular area.
As the philosopher and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written:
“It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own.”
It is much easier to believe we know things than accept our own ignorance towards them. This is partially because we naturally have biases and heuristics to help us get through the day. If we didn’t have these mental shortcuts, we never would be able to get through an hour without reviewing each and every decision. So these are useful, but they also at times prevent us from spending time on deep thoughts--they’re meant to quickly solve a problem for us to allow us to move on. So while these heuristics help speed us along throughout the day, they also lead us to quickly take things at face value and not question them. And this is exactly how society is built.
As Montaigne so adequately summarized:
“The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along.”
We counter this by keeping an open mind. Keeping an open mind, however, is more than just understanding we have mental shortcuts. It it also about getting out of our own way. If we truly wish to be free, wish to be able to see the truth within the world we live, then we must get out of our own way and approach the world with the eyes of a child, allowing curiosity and wonder to rule--allowing this to drive our interests so we want to learn more about a subject.
As the writer David Foster Wallace has so elegantly stated:
“Arrogance, blind certainty, a closed-mindedness that's like an imprisonment so complete that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.”
Close-minded are the prisoners in the cave in Plato’s allegory. After one escapes and sees the world for what it is, he returns to the cave to rescue the others, to advise them of what they’re missing. But instead of being interested, instead of wanting to know more about why they are there or how the world they see is made, they tell the escapee to stop and go away, to leave them alone--to allow them to be what they are, trapped in a world of their own design.
The only thing worse than being physically trapped is being mentally trapped. And we are subjected to be mentally trapped every single day. The television we watch, the radio we listen to, the stories we tell ourselves, these are all ways that reinforce certain stories that purport to tell us how the world works. One escapes these worldviews through the rigorous work of a skeptic.
A skeptic is not skeptical for the sake of being so. Skepticism is a form of philosophical beliefs that force one to rigorously test the assumptions held. It is Socrates constantly questioning people and their knowledge, working to expose the gaps within their thinking and beliefs. It is not someone who is skeptical because they don’t believe in institutions or big corporations.
A skeptic is not skeptical for the sake of being so, they’re more like a scientist, building certain mental frameworks from the knowledge they gather and hold onto those beliefs until greater ones come along. These new beliefs need to be grounded in a reality that can prove why they are superior to the old beliefs, they need to have logic and reason, they need to be tried and tested.
And this is the beauty of life. We must experience it all for ourselves: grasp hold of it, take it in, examine it, work to understand it, mold it between our hands and come to know the experience we’ve had. This is the way we take in the world and grasp hold of it. First through second-hand knowledge and then through first and we work to turn beliefs into knowledge and knowledge into action. When we commit to a mental framework devoted to curiosity and open-mindedness, we allow ourselves the possibility of seeing the world for how it really is.
As the Buddha once said:
“Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, no one can help you as much, not even your father or your mother.”
Strength is provided through wisdom. Wisdom is earned through earnest questioning and an open-mind. One who continually seeks the truth and does not settle is one who has mastered the art of thinking.
Thank you again for reading and I hope you found this useful. Please feel free to heart, comment, or ask questions about this post. Suggestions are always appreciated and considered.
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo