Hold on to convictions tentatively

The title of this post might appear to be one of contradictions. After all isn’t a conviction something that a person knows for certain? If something is certain, how can that person be tentative about it?

In light of a number of psychological, neurological, sociological, and anthropological studies¹ that I have seen recently, the conclusion I have come to (which too, must be held just tentatively) is that our worldview, perspectives, system of beliefs, and even what we “know” as truth is subjective to the “box” that each person has slowly built up over the course of their lives up to this precise moment in time.

Each box is different from every other box. Which means that every worldview, perspective, beliefs, and yes, even “truth” differs from one person to another. In other words, what I know for certain to be truth, the next person may or may not accept as such. Not only may that person not accept it as such at this time, he may not have the capability to ever accept it as such. And likewise, I may have certain beliefs that in reality, may not be true, that because of my life experiences, I may never be able to reject; conversely, there may be things that I believe as false that in reality are true, but I will never be able to accept.

Thus, I must remind myself: hold on to convictions tentatively.

I think and act out of my convictions, my belief system, what I hold to be true. But I must be aware that all the I know, believe, see and hear are limited… that they are only partial views into reality. I have no way to apprehend reality in its entirety, in its fullness, and unobscured by personal and societal preconceptions and influences.

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¹I don’t have links to sources, but to paraphrase some of them: 1) Our biological senses such as sight and hearing, when they go through the process of interpretation in our brains, are selective. We see and hear what we want to see and hear, and have the uncanny ability to filter away stuff that are “irrelevant” to us. 2) We are tribal in nature. Even in an highly individualistic society such as the United States, we form tribes: political, religious, philosophical. We believe and act in ways to further “our” tribe and defeat competing tribes. We have the ability to unconsciously ignore and even contradict fact and truth in order to promote our own “tribal” views.