We must believe that reality is stable, testable, and comprehensible to the human mind. If we are pessimistic on those points, we may as well not try to understand life at all.
1) If reality is not stable, then our conclusions, even if they are right for the moment, will not be right tomorrow.
2) If reality is not testable, then we have no way of engaging with it and therefore thinking about it.
3) If the human mind is not capable of understanding, then no matter how stable or testable reality may be, we will never be able to understand it.
All three of these tenants require a measure of faith. I must exercise faith that gravity will not cease to exist tomorrow. I must exercise faith that the mathematical equations formulated by humans can rightly describe the laws of physics such that I will fly in an airplane.
Extreme skepticism--a belief system where I relentlessly question the possibility of knowing--is a failure to exercise the faith necessary for progress in knowledge.
Descarte's "I think, therefore I am" is a sad fall from faith. If all I can know is that I'm thinking, yet I can not be sure to know anything about the outside world, then I'm in a hopeless situation.
What follows from faith in these three points, is the ability to accept an intellectual tradition. After all, if reality is stable, testable, and knowable, it makes sense that human knowledge would grow and accumulate. I don't have to believe everything about the past, but there should be a line of thinking upon which I can build and amend as needed.
The "out with the old" spirit of the Enlightenment has, in my opinion, contributed to anxiety. At first the prospect of the now and the future seems exciting. However, if previous generations were unable to comprehend anything rightly, what makes us so sure we have things right now? If something could be held as true for centuries, and then thrown out as completely untenable, what does that say about the power of the human mind? If people were previously duped, then how can we be sure we aren't duped now? They thought they were right. What makes us the exception?
By throwing everything out, the message we are saying is this: people can believe something is true (God) for centuries, and be totally off. They can build whole civilizations and intellectual traditions on this idea, and it can all be a lie.
If so, then either we aren't very smart, or reality is not stable and comprehensible. Either way, anxiety is bound to sink in.
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