We, citizens of the world, we like to search for many things: For meaning, for money, for material goods, for knowledge, for sucess, for truth, etc. It's the search for knowledge and truth, meaning, that I'm gonna focus on today on this blog post. Just want to share and vent some personal reflections i've done on this for a while.
Well, we all want safety, comfort and joy, right? So, in the search for this, we go after the things aforementioned, and others. But this mechanism applies not only for the "concrete" stuff, but also for the more abstract mental realm. That's why we want to believe we are always right in what gives us safety and comfort to believe in, why we fight for causes for ourselves and people, why we look for truth and read or watch stuff about our political or religious inclinations. Of course, this, as a mechanism/process itself is not something wrong to be done, I myself like doing it, and I suppose you do the same and cope by doing the same.
But, it depends on how much and HOW we do this. For, clinging for safety can create suffering, unflexibility, or what buddhists may call "dukkha"(the attachment to results). Because, the more we want beliefs and the world to be EXACTLY, PRECISELY as we want, the more we create circunstances for disappointment.
With the joy of being proven right, comes also the possibility of the suffering of discovering wrong. That's why I've been supposing that, for scientists and anyone who dares perscurtate the long confusion and also beauty of philosophy, one must first develop emotional and mental stability and skills to deal with the human condition aforementioned. For, no matter how much of a truth-seeker" you are, a philosopher, a scientist, a political activist, religious activist, etc, you are still a human.
A human With a psyche, emotional and intellectual biases, and maybe a very strong desire to be accurate in your perception of the world(which, as I said, is not a defect by itself, but something that must be dealt with maturity and equilibriuum.)
You probably want to be right, you have feelings and desires too, and that may blind you to accept that we can't cling always for certainty all the times, attached to your favorite ideology being 100% right.
0f course, I'm also a human, so I'm speaking both to myself and to you guys.
So, you may ask: "How can we cope/live with this aspect of human psyche?", you may have thought. Well, I can't provide exact answers, since I myself am not THAT SURE, but maybe, as I reflected, maybe we can try focusing on developing our inner selves first before diving into external search. Developing skills, like the practice of meditation, which claims to provide more emotional stability and peace(which I myself have experienced with this practice, both in and outside practice), to help us be less dominated by our primate instincts in the process of listening to opinions and searching for meaning and guidance and truth, to help us be more like a figure of an open-minded person. (the ideal scientist/admirer of search?)