Answers and Uncertainty

Is it the plight of mankind to be slaves to the desire for certainty? What else can explain why we so quickly and willingly attach ourselves to those leaders who dare to tell us what is truth, what we should believe, what kind of government we should have, and what we need to do to solve our problems? We love authority figures--especially those with charisma. A would-be leader who comes across as an attractive authority can convince us of almost anything they wish. We want to accept their answers without question-- and we do. We are more comfortable having somebody else to figure out the hard answers for us; or maybe we just don’t trust our own judgment, but we can’t seem to bear being uncertain.
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Philosophy As a Way of Life

The early, so-called “great”, philosophers saw philosophy as a way of life, meaning not only a means of livelihood, but more especially a pattern of thinking, a way of perceiving oneself and the universe, and a guide to ethics and morality--a way of deciding how to live and relate to others. They searched, discussed, experimented and labored over trying to develop and teach a method for doing these things. They each sought what they called “truth”, but few ever felt that they were satisfied that they had found an unequivocal answer. Most of them, at various times in their lives, were popular and sought after by some and seen as dangerous heretics by others.
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