Lessons from an encounter with a crane man

America needs to be more open to self-doubt, intellectual humility

Bob seemed like a nice guy. He owns a crane company in the Seattle area, and I hired him last month to lift an 800-pound wood beam into place for a home expansion project at my daughter’s house.

Bob, who appeared to be in his 50s, was gregarious on the phone and when he arrived. He asked about my slavic heritage and told me about a relative who had married into a Ukrainian family.

Then the trouble started. 

He started sharing his admiration of Donald Trump and how “they” are vilifying him because he wishes to change everything — what Trump has called “draining the swamp.”

I suggested that we agree to disagree, but he didn’t stop.  He attacked President Biden, high taxes,  the price of gas, lack of drilling for oil and China’s growing power. Bob was a true believer, all right.

He set the beam in place, but as we parted ways, he asked an insulting question: Why, with my knowledge of Russia and Ukraine, did I not see that we are on the road to communism?”

I didn’t want to engage. I had already told him America has been energy independent for at least five years, that our state has no income tax, that I had been to Russia three times, that I have read Marx and know Americans enjoy a level of political  and economic freedom that Russians can only dream about. 

Bob was unconvinced, but we parted amicably. 

Yes. Bob IS a nice guy. But like thousands of politicians and millions of Americans on all sides of the political divide, he showed no sense of political self doubt.  

We are suffering from what thinkers and some neurologists such as Steven Stosny call an “Epidemic of Certainty.”

Unquestioned loyalty to a person, belief or dogma can lead to divisions and other trouble. 

Unquestioned certainty is an emotional state, not an intellectual one, that ignores competing evidence, drives people to oversimplify complex matters and leads us to devalue, label and stereotype people with opposing views, according to Stosny, writing in a 2021 edition of in Psychology Today. 

Social media algorithms just reinforce our sense of certainty, and our certainties take on cult-level allegiance.

“The more certain we feel, the more vulnerable we are to noticing only the evidence that supports our beliefs while ignoring or discounting contradictory evidence. Confirmation bias fuels the painful polarization we currently experience in this country, with different factions focusing on what the others overlook or discount,” Stosny wrote in 2021.

Thinkers have warned about the danger of excess self-certainty for centuries. The ancient Greeks, Stosny reminds us, warned of it in an inscription on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: "Surety brings ruin."

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one,’ Voltaire said in the 18th century.

Martin Luther, who led the Protestant Reformation,  noted that “Only God and certain madmen have no doubts.”  He no doubt had in mind future butchers such as Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin. 

Luther himself is said to have asked himself a haunting question: What if I am wrong — and leading millions of people into damnation?

I wish similar questions were asked in every cabinet and caucus meeting and every governing board room.

Self doubt is a prerequisite to intellectual humility, which is considered an essential Christian virtue. It is dreadfully hard to achieve. It is often wrongly viewed as weakness or wishy washiness — labels no politician wants.  Those who grab the votes are those who scream with unassailed conviction.  

None of us likes to be wrong, especially about dearly held political and ethical views. To quote Luther again: “The fight against oneself is the worst fight of all.”

We’ve become a nation of sore losers, driven by our certainty that we are right and everyone who opposes us is wrong. This reality exists on all sides of the political spectrum, not just among Trump’s apostles and devotees.

This intellectual failure is what is driving the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature as it threatens to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court decision to protect Black voting rights. 

It’s drives the group Columbia Riverkeeper to oppose virtually all economic development along the Lower Columbia River.

It’s pushing urban-area conservationists to continue demanding the tear-out of Snake River dams despite its immense cost, biological uncertainty of rebuilding salmon runs and damage it would do to rural economies.

And what about the self-righteous progressives who are are giving hostile online  reviews to the Portland auto repair business owned by Southwest Washington Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez over her opposition to student debt relief? There’s a distasteful and revelatory failure here to recognize her valid concerns about national debt and the need for more vocational education, even though I personally disagree with her vote.

This intellectual failing certainly is at work in the abortion debate,  where the pro choice people often forget about the sanctity of life and the pro life side ignores the complex financial, health and well being considerations that drive abortions in the first place. More intellectual humility won’t solve the underlying either/or conflict here, but it could further reduce demand for abortions. 

Our electorate and politicians need to purge themselves of this need to always be right. We should not be afraid to be wrong.

We can start by being open to questioning our facts, assertions and blind spots — and by treating people with different views with respect and acknowledging that life and issues are typically far more complex than our closely held views take into account.  This requires some emotional and intellectual heavy lifting.

Perhaps I should have engaged further with Bob the crane man.