I watched Bill Maher tonight briefly and a person with such anger toward anything conservative proves another thing that is certain. Hatred is not tied to a particular belief system but is deeper and more primal. Unless this primal disregard is changable then we truly are without certainty and our future one continual ugly mess.

And that raises even more interesting quiestions.

And what more does one need certainty about than the origin, meaning, purpose, and destiny of life… particularly MY life??

I have sought for that certainty most of my life, and it is once again eluding me.

At the same time, it seems to me that those in authority around you were guilty of false certainty and lack of nuance. Even if you did have a “perceptual disorder”, it does not follow from that, obviously, that everything you did or felt or thought could be wrong or dismissed. They were wrong to be so sure you were wrong, to treat the issue as black and white.

So sometimes the world is simple, and sometimes it is complex, and it can be hard to know when is when. I suppose it takes all kinds. But there does seem to be some need, it seems to me, to draw some distinction between “good”, moral certainty, and false or immoral certainty. For every MLK, theres a dictator somewhere, equally certain, much more destructive. I suppose I tend to se that as a bigger problem, though I certainly (!) understand and appreciate where youre coming from.

I will give you a personal example. When I was in early elementary school, I was diagnosed with an undefined “perceptual disorder.” It was explained to me that I did not see things the way others saw them. Well, that may have been true, but the effect that this label had was to silence and dismiss my validity as a person. It seriously undermined my self-confidence and took away any ability to stand up or confront bullies. Worse yet, the people who labeled me thus did not take into account that not every person in authority, whether parent, teacher, doctor, minister or whoever, always has my best interests in mind. It left me wide open to manipulation because if I could not trust myself–if my perceptions were wrong–then who could I trust? All it took was someone denying that they had done something, and I was undone. I had no tools with which to fight.

I have noticed that throughout history, it is precisely people like Dr. King who were certain that they were right that ended up having the most impact. Yes, there are a lot of questions that need to be asked regarding race; but there was a time that those questions would have never come up (at least among whites). Likewise, the abolitionists were accused of not understanding the full situation in the South, of not caring about what happened to the slaves once they had been freed, and so forth. And those are valid accusations. But if they had sat down and allowed themselves to be sidetracked by all these considerations, perhaps it would have taken far longer for slavery to be abolished. I could name many other examples.

So I think we need to be very careful that we are not inadvertently giving aid and comfort to those who prey on the weak. That we don’t provide smokescreens for unscrupulous people to hide behind. It is a lot easier, for example, to say to a bully “What you are doing is wrong. Stop it!” when we have a clear idea of what that wrong is. Otherwise we give the bully an out–and believe me, that’s what they love. That is why bullying remains a problem.

In response I would want, first, to draw a distinction between black and white thinking, and unwarranted certainty. They often do track together, but are not identical. And so, the point of my article is that certainty is rarely if ever warranted by evidential reasoning. And in a common sense way, I think its not hard to see why. Its hard to imagine a context, even regarding a topic such as racism, where feeling that one has all the answers — the Fixed and Final answers — and thus has nothing to learn from anyone or anything, would be virtuous. But that is, after all, precisely what certainty amounts to.

And although you may be right that there are some cases in life in which black and white thinking is appropraite, I think they are few and far between, and in fact, racism I dont think would be one of them. The issue of racism doesnt just amount to, is it good or is it bad, but rather, specific issues like: is racial profiling justified? What if it could be shown that racial profiling would improve, in a small but measurable way, airline safety? When would concerns about public safety trump concerns about discrimination, if ever? Is affirmative action justified? In what form? For how long? Under what circumstances? Does it really work? And what do we mean by “work?”

I dont believe any of these issues admit to simple black and white answers. Life is almost always more complex than our thinking about it, and there is always more to learn and understand. And so I guess in the end my reply to your very insightful critique is that Im not sure there are very many instances in which the tools needed to fight cruelty and injustice, as you mentioned, will ever turn out to be dogmatic absolutism. I think those tools turn out to be: the better argument. But arguments can only help where there is room for persuasion and the changing of minds — which is precisely what is not possibly with false certainty. You cannot argue with someone who is certain.

I think you are veering towards the erroneous conclusion that if one is not a moral absolutist then one can have no moral bearings at all, and I just dont think thats true.

In the very first episode of the BBC series “Lark Rise to Candleford”, young Laura is protesting the fact that she is being asked to partake in an act she feels is unjust. Her aunt tells her that these things are nuanced, that she is just a child, and when she grows up she will understand them better. Laura says, “I do not think I want to understand.”

I am very deeply concerned that by blurring the lines here and there and condemning so-called “black and white” thinking that we may be opening the doors to all kinds of cruelty and injustice (dare I say evil?) or at the very least robbing ourselves of the very tools needed to identify and fight them.

I am sure that there were plenty who said to Dr. King that racial discrimination was not a simple issue, that there were all kinds of shades of gray, and wouldn’t it be better perhaps to pursue a different course, one that–ahem–might not be so cut-and-dried in its thinking? I for one am glad that Dr. King did not listen to them.

Just a thought here from the sidelines . . .