“Those who believe they are certainly right are certainly wrong.” ~ Ian McGilchrist
This is a foundational truth in psychiatry that suggests the need of dynamic balance between certainty and doubt. Yet, it is rejected by the profit-driven society that praises fast result. This creates a fake certainty of inside-out morale, where oppression and deception is justified by the speed and profits.
This circle can be broken by the two slow motions: building influence maps and dialectical wheels
The solution is in slow reckoning via building Influence and Dialectical Maps and then probing
Certainty is only constructive in combination with Humility and Doubt. Without such a combination, it turns all virtues inside out. Confidence becomes dogmatic arrogance, speed is achieved via oppression, clarity via reductionism, profits via wars.
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Turned outward, it hardens into dogma, control, and blind systems. Turned inward, it becomes confidence, growth, and moral clarity.
Certainty must be complemented by Doubt, or otherwise it creates an “Inside-Out” shift: we start chasing clarity and efficiency through hypocrisy and oppression.
“He who is certain he is right is almost certainly wrong.
He who is certain of his path needs no certainty of the outcome.”
Harmful Certainties
“The attempt to make heaven on Earth invariably produces hell.” — Karl Popper
Don’t absolutize anything that imposes your worldview or control on others. Any certainty directed outward rather than inward inevitably generates an equal and opposite resistance—often invisible at first—which produces countless exceptions to rules that once seemed unshakable.
1. Absolutizing Technology
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Technology causes the illusions of power and speed. When you think that technology and automation makes everything easier, faster, and more efficient, you are most certainly overlooking its destructive side
From the latest self-deceptions:
The belief that AI can make perfect predictions ignores its biases, hallucinations, blind spots, and above all – inability to synthesize new meanings and solutions that weren’t available before. Yet, Larry Ellison pushes for global databases of citizen data analyzed with advanced AI. Bill Gates has advocated for a permanent, globally coordinated pandemic surveillance system (GERM). Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum has developed strategic frameworks for deeply integrated digital identity systems. All of these make society more fragile rather than smarter.
2. Absolutizing Authority
When governments assume their decisions must apply without exceptions, they drift toward presuming that citizens are guilty until proven innocent. History shows that even well-intentioned authorities make catastrophic mistakes when they stop questioning themselves. As Alfred Korzybski warned, the map is not the territory—yet institutions repeatedly mistake their map for absolute truth.
3. Absolutizing Logic and Systems
Formal logic, legal codes, and algorithms are tools—not final arbiters of reality. When systems override compassion or context, they create injustice disguised as order.
4. Absolutizing One’s Own Vision
From tech billionaires to political leaders to ideological movements, the pattern is the same:
“If only everyone followed my system, the world would be fixed.”
But imposing certainty on a complex world collapses human diversity into a brittle structure. See When Right is Bad and Wrong is Good
Necessary Absolutizations
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Do absolutize only what turns inward—your faith, dignity, humility, unconditional love, devotion to your loved ones, and your connection to higher consciousness. These are absolutes that create new qualities while preserving true identities; they do not dominate others but complement them.
1. The Absolute Rejection of Our Own Infallibility When Affecting Others
If there is an “absolute evil,” it is believing we are unquestionably right while wielding power over others — especially when that certainty hides behind institutions, political movements, or claims of moral purity. No deception cuts deeper than justifying cruelty in the name of security.
This absolutization protects humility, dignity, and the sacred responsibility we bear toward those who depend on us.
Certainty in the Own Ability to Grow
What is the best Quote here?
The main certainty is that all the answers are within me and I can solve all problems, overcome all difficulties, i.e. I am completely self-sufficient without any need for external help, authorities, technologies, or any other support systems. Yet, for this I must embrace patience, humility, and determination to self-correct my own misconceptions.
This is not absolutizing conclusions but absolutizing growth. A living system expands, adapts, and evolves; a rigid one decays.
This absolutization honors the wisdom of ancestors: to keep walking, keep learning, keep refining.
Certainty that the Heart knows better than the Mind; Priority of Heart Over Mechanism
Logic is an assistant, not a ruler. No algorithm or ideology can replace the multidimensional judgment that arises from intuition, empathy, memory, lived experience, and inner values.
What is the best Quote here?
“To be certain of the truth is to blind oneself to reality.
To be certain of the heart is to see through the dark.”
This absolutization protects our ability to listen to the divine spark within us — the voice that connects us to God, to higher consciousness, and to the deeper intelligence of life itself.
The Absolute Golden Rule
If I refuse unjust surveillance for myself, I cannot justify it for others. If I want others to challenge me when I drift into harmful certainty, I must extend that same challenge to them.
This absolutization safeguards human connection — the moral responsibility we owe to our children, to our communities, and to future generations.
Certainty that Everything Is As It Should Be
No regret, pitty, the world is balanced, if I feel bad – I am going through a lessen. If I feel good – I can create a new lesson…
5. The Absolute Pursuit of Higher-Dimensional Ethics
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” (John Keats’ poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn)
What we often call “beauty” — in art, relationships, or moral insight — is the harmony of many dimensions of life. This is why Dostoevsky claimed that beauty will save the world, and why Laozi taught that softness overcomes hardness: multidimensional life defeats everything that tries to flatten it.
The task is not creating perfect laws or perfect technologies, but expanding the dimensionality of perception: seeing more than one perspective at once, recognizing the teacher within obstacles, and learning from opponents rather than destroying them.
This absolutization ties together all the others: to live upward, inward, and deeply — connected to dignity, ancestry, God, and the generations yet to come.
The main certainty is that all the answers are within me and I can solve all problems, overcome all difficulties, i.e. I am completely self-sufficient without any need for external help, authorities, technologies, or any other support systems. Yet, for this I must embrace patience, humility, and determination to self-correct my own misconceptions.