Launching Perplexity

Quandary (noun): a situation in which it is difficult to decide what to do; predicament; dilemma; a state of doubt or uncertainty, especially with regard to the choice of alternatives; a dilemma.

"Our greatest challenge today...is to couple conviction with doubt. By conviction, I mean some pragmatically developed faith, trust, or centeredness; and by doubt I mean openness to the ongoing changeability, mystery, and fallibility of the conviction."
~ Kirk Schneider, 1999, The Paradoxical Self, p. 7

This is my quandary. I sincerely desire the philosophical conviction I see in others because it seems to give them such comfort and security in a world of uncertainty. They understand that we need hope to survive, we need meaning and purpose in order to hope, and we need to be convinced of that meaning and purpose beyond all doubt for it to do us any good. They essentially take the central paradox of existence and put a positive spin on it. They at the very least lean towards conviction and truth (and their own ability to grasp that truth) and away from the despair of the paradox itself, which (seemingly) proves we lack the capacity to understand the existence of any absolute truth.

Yet I also despise the conviction I see in others because it seems to always bring with it a sense of superiority (whether overt or covert), stubbornness, and ignorance of other viewpoints. And so I have spurned conviction and I "pride" myself on my open-mindedness and "objectivity". And yet this is the very philosophy that is most admirable in our current society (at least in academia). So why should I be proud (other than the possibility that I'm just rebelling against the rigid religiosity of the Christian society I grew up in)? Am I just like everybody else in my (new) environment?

And here is where I am most consistently inconsistent. This is where I am proud of my ambition for philosophical consistency with my paradoxical self (I'm proud, but I hate it nonetheless)... I cannot even maintain my conviction for complete open-mindedness. I still see the ironic truth in the bumper sticker that says "Some people are so open-minded their brains fall out" =)

But what other choices do we have? How do we decide what to determine as foundational conviction and what to afford varying levels of plasticity? Can one person ever find a balance of conviction and doubt without one negating the other?

So here I am. I'm tired of my brains falling out, but in the same token I'm not quite ready for the lobotomy of closed-minded blissful ignorance (my not-so-nice definition of FAITH - or even a basic "conviction" to build from).

At the end of the day (today), all I can do is dump these circular ramblings of mindless consciousness onto this vast oasis of purged human thought that we call "the blogosphere".

And I feel better already =)