Theme of the Week: Doubt, Inquiry, and Truth

Based on Richard Rudd's Gene Key 63, a discussion about the uses and abuses of doubt, and inquiry as empathy in action.

The theme of this week, Doubt, Inquiry, and Truth, based on Gene Key 63, is already shooting high for the first in this series!

I love the keywords of Gene Key 63 because doubt is such a passive state to be in. Applying the quality of a curious mind to make an inquiry into your doubts is an active cure for passivity.

We are always flowing like water, and sometimes we just flow into holes in the ground. We get stuck. And it’s easy to remain as water and stay there, feeling somewhat comforted by the structure of this hole, this structure of our belief system.

But the worst thing to do is let ourselves believe that doubts about ourselves and the world is in fact the capital-t Truth.

We attach a lot of our identity to rigid structures of belief. It's not a wonder why we can feel personally attacked when someone has a different perspective of the world.

When your doubt is someone else's strength, it feels like you're on completely different pages.

Think about how much isolation and alienation occurs when try to hold tight to your doubts about the world. It feels like the world is moving on without you, that you've become a fossil of beliefs.

Nietzsche provided a great analogy for keeping swift and light with one’s beliefs (emphasis mine):

I don’t want either my ignorance or the liveliness of my temperament to keep me from being understandable for you, my friends—not the liveliness, however much it compels me to tackle a matter swiftly to tackle it at all.

For I approach deep problems like cold baths: quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. The freezing cold makes one swift.

Nietzsche, The Gay Science

We stay dynamic, transformative beings with our belief systems tied to our values rather than the structures made by others.

We stay unconditioned, ready to drop what doesn’t work for us, even though it appeared to work for long before.

But recognize that we have our doubts because we are cautious creatures, born from a lineage of survival; doubt was needed to we could shy away from what doesn't work, what's risky, and move toward the practical, the known.

But most of us, especially those reading Substack right now, aren’t in a survival society anymore. Our daily actions are unlikely to maim or kill us. So why do we confuse doubt with those deep fears that trigger our lizard brain?

In other words, what do we really have to lose in giving space to the unknown, whether its people, ideas, or ways of being?

Enter the act of inquiry, where we use our doubt with an open mind. We verify the results of ideas, promises, and the unknown.

Inquiry is the process of understanding and ultimately determining if it works for you, or it doesn't.

Even when it doesn't work, you can now understand why it works for others. Inquiry is the antidote to not just doubt, but prejudice.

Inquiry is empathy in action.

I understand why Truth is a Siddhi, or more of a spiritual ideal than a practical quality.

Except in spiritual idealism, truth doesn't have the use that we hope it does. When we talk about truth in the human world, we are really just trying to be on the same page as everyone else. We hope everyone at least believes the world is round, and that we have the same interval for each second that ticks by.

But the worldly truths of how and why certainly deserve their doubts. Our hows and whys have changed for thousands of years, and no one bats an eye at this constant transformation of human behavior.

Yet on the daily, witness someone else living their life and channel our judgments as if we know better. But really, what truth do we know that they don’t, that we can sit on that high horse?

And that is why we can benefit from a genuine empathy for the lifestyles of others, through continuous inquiries into why we have our own structures of beliefs. Before questioning why they believe their thing, question why you believe your own?

And then we can better understand why develop certain limitations in our lives ("I can do this, but not that").

We have deep, core values that drive our passions for the world, and we simply don't have the time to apply our energy to the passions of others.

Our own small truths lie openly in these values.

Thanks for reading,

— Dom

P.S. You can listen to a discussion of Gene Key 63 here, by author Richard Rudd