The Tyranny of Certainty in Uncertain Times

Let’s begin with the first line of Don Quixote: "Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago..."

It’s a beautiful, striking opening to a story.

Somewhere in Europe this autumn, during a book tour, in a place whose name I do wish to remember but prefer not to disclose, I took a cab to the train station after a long and delightful literary event.

The driver, a young gentleman, turned on the radio as soon as we set off. It did not occur to him to ask whether I minded or not. The station was tuned to a fiery radio host, and with the volume cranked up high, I had little choice but to listen along with him.

Two things struck me immediately: the rage and bitterness in the speaker’s tone, especially when he talked about “them”, and the unshakable certainty with which he spoke.

I know I should have held my tongue, but I couldn't. After ten minutes or so, I asked the driver to tell me more about this speaker, and why he was so fond of him. His answer stayed with me.

“Because he knows everything,’ the driver said, nodding in agreement with himself. ‘His mind is absolutely clear.’

I smiled an awkward smile. ‘Well, uhm, can anyone really know everything though?’

He looked at me in the mirror as if seeing me for the first time. There was only pity in his gaze.

‘Some people can do that,’ he said.

“The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call himself a fool—a faculty unheard of nowadays.”

When Fyodor Dostoyevsky penned these words, he was lamenting the rise of a new kind of educated ignorance that went hand in hand with verbose arrogance.

Dostoyevsky, like many novelists, poets, and philosophers before and after him, recognised something precious in our ability to acknowledge and embrace our own flaws and follies rather than hide them. He feared that this value was already on the brink of being lost, even in his time. Even back then.

If Dostoyevsky were alive today, I wonder how he would view our digital age and the hyper-polarized and bitterly politicised world we now live in. What would he think of a society that has become almost entirely incapable of saying, “I don’t know”?

What would he make of our tendency to glorify those we deem to “know absolutely everything”?

The truth is, we hardly ever say, “I don’t know,” anymore. When was the last time we spoke those words during a serious, and possibly heated, conversation?

When was the last time I admitted, “I don’t know; I’m still learning”?

We seem increasingly compelled to have an opinion on everything—and I do mean everything. Not only that, but we cling to these opinions with unwavering certainty, and entrenched duality, reinforcing the distance between "us versus them". The door to ambiguity and plurality is firmly shut, leaving little room for doubt, self-reflection, intellectual and spiritual growth.

As populist rhetoric and opportunistic demagoguery gain speed, more and more we equate the sound of certainty with strength, and any sign of uncertainty with emotional weakness.

It is possible to have strong values and passionate commitments and still be open to self-doubt and self-examination. Art and literature used to thrive on confusion, awkwardness, bewilderment, and doubt—especially self-doubt.

A significant part of learning involves un-learning. This is in line with the process that the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch would describe as “un-selfing.”

On the train, I open the book I had brought with me to read. I notice the bookmark for the first time—it’s a picture of tiles. It reminds me, and I’m glad it does:

The Ottoman architect Sinan, a brilliant polymath, intentionally left small flaws in many of his works. In the timeless monuments that he built in Istanbul and beyond, in one little corner, he would turn a single tile upside down.

It was his way of acknowledging: I am not perfect, and I do not know everything.