Hello Eric, here’s a graph outlining your levels of dogmatism over the last few years:

The trend is pretty clear. Coming fresh out of high school (pre-2017), you felt like you knew what you were doing. Your identity and beliefs were set solid and you weren’t afraid to let others know. You respected others, but for those who disagreed with you, perhaps a little less so.

But then came second and third year Uni (2018-19), when you met people smarter than yourself, and you suddenly fell under pressure from questions like why? and what makes you say that? Your ideologies, which once seemed so strong, now began to show cracks.

And in 2020, when you had time to think due to an extensive lockdown, you realised you know nothing at all.

You realised you don’t really understand terms like capitalism, Marxism, communism or democracy. You realised you’ve been throwing around opinions laid out by your smart friends and have been defending ideas that you haven’t really thought much about.

And it’s unsettling, because now you’re chronically uncomfortable giving your stance on an issue as:

• You know the issue is complicated, but you don’t know why;
• You know there are factors at play you’re not aware of, but you don’t know what;
• You know you should go and find out more, but you’re not sure how.

Hence your very low dogmatism and chronic decision paralysis.

But perhaps – just perhaps – waging war against convoluted hyper-rationality is something worth pursuing. Maybe in a society of excessive digital deduction, the tendency to consider other points of view is an advantage, rather than a hindrance. As Bertrand Russell, a champion of analytic philosophy, suggests quite passionately:

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid; and those with any imagination or understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Let doubt avail.