Assumptions

It has always troubled me that we live in a world that values assumptions so highly. I explore this with AoaN, particularly with how it can gradually shape identity, but I merely scratch at the surface. I’ve seen it all my life in everyone from family to strangers, children to the aged. I see the behavior in myself, and cringe, particularly when these assumptions take on the air of convictions. I especially hate it when someone holds me to them. And I fear the possibility that my identity is being shaped by their influence.

There are indisputable facts fundamental to the experience of living life. Yet, in the scope of what we think about and then discuss at the water cooler, we rarely engage with those facts directly. The majority of what we think about and discuss are extrapolations - "if A, then B, and of course if B, then C" - until we're way down the road discussing M's and N's and believing every word of it. And sometimes even the A's aren't completely true. Take math, for example. I had assumed mathematics to be of rock solid foundation throughout my life, until I was introduced the work of Kurt Godel, whose First Incompleteness Theorem, stating that any adequate axiomatizable theory is incomplete, and exemplified by the sentence "This sentence is not provable" because it is not provable in the theory, pretty much undermines math as I’d known it. In a similar vein, I was recently assured that I could go on believing in the Easter Bunny because it cannot be substantiated that he does not exist. So it is that I have lived my life, from math to an egg-hiding hare, on the foundation of shaky assumptions.

Create Believable Facts

But is that inescapable? Much of the time, I arrive at my assumptions because I don’t have all the information. And so rather than suffer the stress of the unknown, I create believable facts based upon what little I have to work with.

I’ll give you an example.

This week, Keith Richards fell out of a palm tree. All that anyone seems to know is that he was in Figi on holiday during the Rolling Stones Bigger Bang world tour and that he is unharmed. No one knows what really happened. Even resort employees wouldn’t comment. So, alas, we are once again left to the devices of our imaginations.

To properly consider this event, one might typically begin with “What the hell was he doing up in a palm tree?” though given that it was Keith Richards, the question might be better poised with less perplexity: “Huh. I wonder if he was carrying a bottle of Bacardi?” The picture that came to my mind was Mr. Richards shimmying up to the tree’s heights in the vain of a Gilligan, his quest less likely spurred by the mysterious impulse of an artist, and more likely by a desire to make a fresh piña colada. I’m imagining he was almost to the top, just out of reach of a coconut, when he slipped and fell to the sand below, between the deck chairs and discarded Bud bottles (Anheuser-Busch is proud sponsor of the Bigger Bang). I’m picturing people rushing towards him, not knowing what to do. I’m seeing a paunchy, grey-haired (pony-tailed) man, an agent or the type veiling his impulse to cry out “the tour is over” with “Call a doctor!” I see a bunch of people circling around him, and under the pressure of the stress of the unknown, starting to assume.

As Supporting Evidence

I have to say that if I were in Fiji gathered in that circle, and someone were to ask me, I’m certain I would offer up that, in my opinion, Mr. Richards was drunk. I might candy-coat it with the modifier “likely,” but that would only show an unwillingness to take responsibility for my opinion. A sixty-two year old man climbing a palm tree? And, he’s a rock star, I’d submit as supporting evidence. And Tom Waits said, "Well, the first rule is not to try to drink with him." Now I'm imagining nods of agreement making their way around the circle like the wave. Too much of ole John Barleycorn. No question about it. Keith Richards had been drinking. And that is the fact that we would all talk about at the water cooler on Monday.

I think that most of us who read of Mr. Richards' fall from grace would assume that alcohol was involved, and the stories created will be accepted as well-founded. And then it will become a kind of truth in our minds. Naturally, there's no truth to any of it until its substantiated, but we don't need proof. That's what troubles me. We have the ability to believe it, and then base more assumptions upon those assumptions until all of it begins to affect the kind of people we are.

Is it that we are wired in this way to process the slew of information we must face? Or are we aspiring to laziness, not willing to do the work necessary to finding the truth? Worse, is everything that I've written here based upon assumptions that I can't see? Toss me a bone.