The Strength of Doubt
9/11/2008
We revisit a Chuck's Corner written seven years ago.
Today, September 11, 2008, we consider a Chuck's Corner written seven years ago. You will notice that the page is technologically primitive, and that digital photography has evolved over the years. Still, the message rings true. Here is what appeared on September 12, 2001:
Yesterday, September 11, 2001, we held a whole-community assembly on Leonard Field. Rather than pretend to know the details of the events breaking in the news, Steve spoke of the horror in general terms, and provided this community's well-defined values as context and contrast.
It's nice living in a woodsy valley in central New Hampshire, but Proctor's ties to New York City and D.C. run very deep, and everyone is touched in a distinct manner. Some students are dealing with loss; others with fear.
They are fortunate to be in a community that focuses on attainment of each member's personal success. That makes it hard for us to observe them trying to grapple with the insanity that exists in the world we are giving them.
In 1872, the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and three other extraordinary intellectuals met repeatedly in Cambridge, Massachusetts to discuss the meaning and potential for reason and rational thought--given the horrors they had experienced in the Civil War. Holmes's great conviction (Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club) was that those who know they are right doom us to violence. Unlike fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Hiddhis, etc., those of us who admit doubt have the great advantage and strength of exploring with free thought and open inquiry. The scientific method--one of the great triumphs of civilization--assumes that we know just about nothing; we simply have operative theories (like evolution) that work better than others to explain observable phenomenon--(a notion lost on Creationists.) Whatever else we can assume about suicidal terrorists, surely they lack doubt in the beliefs that justify their hideous acts. That, we must recognize, is their flaw.