I
have always admired—or, more accurately, envied with a gnawing
envy—people who live in the certainty of a totalizing worldview. I
have always thought that the only kind of mental greatness is the
kind that jump immediately to an answer to every question, that fits
every possible scenario neatly into an organized mental system, and
that understands the relationships of each part to the whole. I have
always thought that this was a feature of “true faith”: that
along with a really real Christian belief would come an intellectual
understanding of everything that knew where each piece belonged.
What
do these kinds of people do? Here are some examples.
They
hear about a new law making its way through the legislature, and they
know right away whether it's right or wrong, good or bad, practical
or impractical, helpful or harmful. They have a theological (or other
ideological) explanation for their response, too, right away.
They
hear about some tabloid scandal, and they know right away whether the
person in question was playing for headlines, or caught as a victim
in a larger scheme, or using fame to promote some valuable lesson at
the cost of privacy, or even putting their liberty at risk for the
sake of subverting some abused authority.
They
interpret international events on the micro- and macro-scopic scales
as easily as turning the pages of a novel.
They
create reasonably logical syllogisms in ordinary conversation.
Now,
I am not one of these people. I have always doubted the reality of my
own faith, partly because I do not have this kind of certainty. I
have been laboring under the idea that a “real” faith would come
with its own totalizing worldview, and that if I do not know how to
interpret everything, I must be deficient in mental ability,
Christian commitment, or both.
I
don't have a clear position on every political issue. I'm an
Independent, largely from lack of understanding of the implications
of policies and party platforms. I don't understand the causal
relationships of history and future. I don't know whether to commend
or condemn most behaviors that make the front page—or that are
confessed to me in my office.
So
I've been waiting to grow up.
And
I then read “I
Have No Opinion” by Rebecca Tirrell Talbot, which
encourages writers to take their time developing their ideas, not to
rush into conviction and certainty.
And
I assigned my students a reading from They
Say, I Say
by Gerald Graff and Kathy Berkenstein, which talks about including
your own opinions and the first-person pronoun in essays. It seemed
to me that most first-year college students probably need more time
to develop their ideas.
And
I'm starting to think, there's
something to be said for uncertainty.
I
mean, think about it for a minute. Is any totalizing theory really
“totalizing”? How is that possible? For one thing, we little
people don't know everything. For another, not everything is
knowable. For another, our racial body of knowledge changes: parts of
it become obsolete and other parts enter, resplendent with the sheen
of the radically new. History unfolds, or unravels. We are finite.
Reality is complex.
So
my new question is: Is
knowing everything really such a great idea?
Maybe it's better to be skeptical, cynical, doubtful, cautious, and
uncertain. Maybe that's a better reflection of reality.
Oops, did I just create a new
totalizing theory? Sorry about that.
2 comments:
Writing that article at the beginning of the school year made me wonder what this means for class discussions, too. The people who have better responses are often the ones who sit there for the whole class period in silence and THEN say something. But you can't have a whole class run like that. So... what's a teacher to do...?
Writing that article at the beginning of the school year made me wonder about the way classroom discussions are set up, too. It's often the quiet student who sits there listening to what everyone else has said that has the best answer. But a class discussion can't really run that way. So... what's a teacher to do...?
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