Scepticism and the Unstable Self

The greatest proof in favour of scepticism is its denial.Typically the gnat of scepticism is swattedt aside as a mere annoyance since “if it’s impossible to know if a statement is true, then we cannot know that scepticism itself is true, and hence there is no justified reason for its assertion - hence scepticism undermines itself”, which is cleverly naive. The solution is satisfactory until you question what occurs when no other forms of knowledge or epistemological verification can be validated either. What is the end conclusion of an argument of elimination when you end up eliminating every potential option? The verification of scepticism must be validated as a ‘shadow proof’, for clearly as aforementioned there can be no positive affirmation of any assertion of scepticism. Instead scepticism should be seen as a descriptive ‘state of affairs’ where everything is under doubt, that one is uncertain of every knowledge or way of thinking - including the idea of us not possessing any knowledge. Scepticism is the feeling of crying out for and trying to grasp any small island of security and certainty, and yet never having confidence in anything you find. Scepticism is raw chaos, that which can be experienced yet never articulated nor understood (Which you can prove by taking a tab of acid, and assessing your word spaghetti the next day lmao).

The one who becomes a sceptic is the person who is most vehement and confident in the discovery of fundamental and stable knowledge. They who value and desire truth the highest will find it denied from them, granted only to those who are satisfied with dogmatic faith. Scepticism is like quicksand, struggling against your sinking feet only serves to further deepen and entrap one into its grasp. Anyone who has taken on a deep academic project will (unless they’re a genius, or have little sense) inevitably engage in two productions: they will confirm the hopelessness of completely making sense of their subject, yet also make sense of and order a small part of this chaos within their research - is this not the most fundamental image of scepticism? Progress in understanding is undeniable, and yet each addition entrenches our knowledge of our inability know. And yet we even lack even the guarantee that knowledge is pointlessly unachievable, for it appears equally undeniable that we gain real definitive benefits of knowledge. So forever we're damned to produce and reflect on knowledge that we know will forever be false!

Yet the fact that this image appears peculiar is itself a mystery, is this not the intellectual climate that defines our age? An all-out academic assault on the idea of objective knowledge, and an existentialist iconoclasm of all “coercive” societal institutions and traditions? Is it not the norm that I have my viewpoint, you have your viewpoint, and we can both be on our merry way? Is it not both the post-modernist and post-colonial critique that the imposition of one culture's constructed knowledge onto another is a great evil, of which can anyone with an understanding of history deny? And yet what does this leave us with? That there is only one's personal viewpoint and understanding, which in all odds is designed solely to garner power for yourself? And where are we to find ourselves when rampant atomization cries out for everyone to shake off identities and normative evaluations that society wishes to uphold - even the word ‘societal’ itself now has all the dirtiness of a slave-owners pipe smoke. All institutions and customs which question or undermine the individual must be overthrown! Those bastard academics are keeping all the chaos and instability for themselves, we must co-opt it for the masses!

The spectre of scepticism clings to every wall and lecture hall, and yet it’s nowhere to be found. The same professors who constantly rediscover the instability of knowledge then proceed to write another book or journal article. The banal limit themselves to addressing only small section of an esoteric problem, the delusional open their writings with grend apologetics, “of course we have to keep in mind this unsolvable and ubiquitous issue in our tradition when dealing with such a topic”. How gloriously orthodox these disciples of scepticism are, to not allow some basic trivialities which threaten the significance of their entire project to throw them off! Merely acknowledge the issue to avoid criticism and proceed to act as if it they don't exist, the only specialists who’ll read your work are deluding themselves in an identical manner anyway - what else is a discipline but institutionalised denial? And yet people have very real beliefs, and very meaningful values. People trust certain ways of understanding the world, and discern those against nonsensical and destructive beliefs. The ideas one adheres to deeply impacts their quality of life and their success in navigating the world. In fact iss certainty of belief not a defining feature of modern society, expressed within the rigidities and certainty of increasing political polarisation? An epoch defined by deep instability of intellectual knowledge which can only be understood through the ubiquity of concrete and solid beliefs!

The foolishness of the academic is in assuming there are deeper meanings that aren’t there, the foolishness of the common man is in assuming what is on the surface is all there is

What is asserted definitively within language is reductionist of the complexity of meaning, and yet what is inarticulable cannot be verified to see if its nonsense

We mock the stupidity of our ancestors in not being able to see what is blatantly obvious, despite knowing we are the past which is yet to come

Whoever seeks and values truth shall be left empty handed, only those who disparage and denigrate truth will believe they have any

Knowledge is the power which ubiquitously dominates the world, and yet is nowhere to be found

We are aware that everyone's beliefs are determined by what they want to believe, and yet we vehemently justify our own ideas as being rationally formed

Many are aware of false and unhelpful thought patterns and trends, and yet immediately believe them again when they reappear.

Where does this leave those that scepticism has adopted? For where does knowledge reside? Sure it is materialised in books and all manner of recordings, but prior to its inscription it can only live within human hosts. And whatever ideas reside within ones mind cannot help but leak out and infect their soul. Whilst the precise relation between belief with both personality and emotion is unclear, it is fairly self-evident that belief does have some non-insignificant impact. But even further than that, we can talk about scepticism as possessing an individual; by which I mean that some people have a natural tendency towards questioning everything. Not in the traditional ‘anti-authority’ sense, but which cannot help but problematise and destabilise everything that one comes across - including the idea of relying on oneself instead of adhering to authority. This essentially is the core of academia formed into a compulsion of personality. This mustn't be confused for anyone engaged in academics, this is something that takes over one's life, it cannot be compartmentalised. Whilst unsure of my own precise positioning, it’s evident the instability and torment such phantom’s haunting has done to my life.

Someone who prays to a God that they don’t know if they believe in

Someone who is permanently in unease over their gender subversion

Someone who is incapable of deep and substantial beliefs

Someone who doesn’t truly understand what belief means to them

Someone who can only function in the world through questioning

An incessant curiosity and questioning to understand what things ‘really mean’ is great if you want to develop creative ideas, it’s terrible if you want to have a life. In attending university I have essentially put myself into life-long debt to contract a disease (No it’s not chlamydia my test was negative fuck off). For I am very deeply aware of the sting that questioning has inflicted upon me. Yet I could hardly have prevented myself from such a situation as the knowledge of the personal destabilising effect of questioning only came about through said questioning, and I can hardly escape such a fate since the only hopeful getaway available is to continue questioning under the hope I can craft a stable raft from such investigations. Knowing that questioning is an ailment doesn’t resolve the emotional dependence I have on such a way of understanding the world. All the ideas I know, and yet how much they leave me a fool! I can tell you all about the controversies of ‘Ibn Arabia’s Wahdat ul-Wujud, and yet am clueless on how to choose a fulfilling career or how to nurture a loving family. Having an academic fixation is to constantly feel the pressing weight of instability, and yet to be doubtful that anything you can produce from such knowledge will ever be of any useful signficance.

And it is essential to understand that such instability is emotionally felt, a deeply unnerving foundation which emphasises the conflict of every personal and external contradiction. That every aspect and conceptualisation of yourself comes under the same unrelenting questioning and scrutiny that is expected of abstract concepts, except concepts don’t have feelings to wreck havoc upon. Although the next question is if such feelings are actually caused by questioning or not: maybe it’s mental illness, maybe I’m not eating enough, maybe I’m just exhausted - autism probably is a large part of this internal confusion. I’m probably overcomplicating life, but that’s also kind of my point. There is a reason why the apple of Eden was the tragedy of giving knowledge to humans, because freedom is merely the oppression of being forced to question - and to question is to be forever trapped in uncertainty. How casually it is that both society and individuals inflict this burden on people under the guise of strength and liberation