1. Know nothing, reject everything.
2. Want nothing, fear nothing.
3. Feel nothing.
One. Know nothing, reject everything. As a Sceptic you know that you don’t know and cannot know anything, not even your own ignorance. Therefore, when you are met with any appearance in life, for all you know it is false. Because of this, you are free to reject any appearance.
Are you met with something that seems fearful? Fear is unpleasant; you don’t want to feel fear. So reject the source of your fear: reject the appearance of the thing that seems fearful. For all you know it is not real and does not exist.
It might appear that you are standing atop a cliff and fearing falling, but for all you know you are dreaming or hallucinating. You might not be here, the cliff might not be real; how silly it would be to be so scared of something that isn’t real!
Or it might appear to you that your head hurts. But, for all you know, you do not even have a head. How can you feel pain in something that you don’t even have?!
Perhaps these are unhelpful and unrealistic examples. They express my bias. I will fight to be fair to the Sceptics and work with some more helpful illustrations.
It might appear to you that people are thinking badly of you. But, for all you know, this is a false appearance: you can’t know the inner workings of their minds. So reject the belief that they are thinking badly of you. You have every right to reject this belief, even when they are saying to you ‘I think badly of you’, because for all you know they are lying or trying to teach you a lesson. You can’t know what they think, or if what they are saying is representative of what they think, or if what they think is right; and in fact they cannot know whether you are rightly to be thought badly of, or ought to be well thought of, or whether you are really acting in a way that ought to be thought well or badly of. You don’t know, they don’t know, none of you can know, so how can anyone rightly think well or badly of anyone? Because of this sceptical mire, you are free to reject all judgements and be whoever you want to be. There is freedom in this.
For all you know you are exactly where you are supposed to be and doing exactly what you ought to be doing; how good would that feel? And for all you know you are exactly where you shouldn’t be, doing exactly what you shouldn’t be doing; how bad would that feel? You can’t know which of these is true, if either. You are free to believe what you want. You have no more or less reason to believe you are exactly where you ought to be, doing exactly what you ought to be doing, than you have to deny this. So believe it, if you choose, because who can stop you?
Two. Want nothing, fear nothing. For all you know, whatever seems to you good is not in fact good. You might be wanting things that you don’t really want. For all you know, whatever seems bad to you is not in fact bad. You might be fearing things that you shouldn’t really fear. If you can see this clearly, you won’t really want or fear anything.
Imagine you are looking at what appears to be a tasty cake. It seems like something that you want. Do you? What if it is actually rotten and mouldy on the inside and will make you very ill: do you want it then? Of course not. But how do you know which it is? You don’t and you can’t, not until you’ve taken a bite at least. It could be good, it could be bad, you can’t know. Let’s for argument’s sake say that there is a 50/50 chance the cake will make you very ill. Would you risk it for a bit of pleasure? I wouldn’t. Picture the cake as something that will make you ill – because for all you know it might – and it seems a lot less desirable. And now you no longer want the cake.
Imagine you are preparing to do something that seems like it is fearful and unpleasant. Perhaps you are going in for a dental procedure. You expect it to be painful; it’s not something that you want. Do you fear it? What if the drugs that they will use on you will make the whole experience really very enjoyable, totally pain free and quite euphoric? And what’s more, you cure a pain that’s been bugging you for months. Why would you fear that? And how do you know which it will be? You don’t and you can’t; until you sit in the chair and start the procedure, you don’t know how it’s going to go. Is it the uncertainty that you fear? It can’t be, because there is nothing inherently fearful about uncertainty. Imagine there is an uncertain chance of two outcomes, both of which are pleasurable: it can go well in one way or well in another. Would you fear this? Of course not. But it is uncertain. And so you cannot fear uncertainty, but only outcomes that appear to you to be bad. As a Sceptic, you are free to reject these appearances. You are free to believe whatever you want. If you want to be free from the fear of this procedure, picture it as something really enjoyable (which for all you know it will be) that has no bad outcome and it will seem a lot less fearful. If you are a well-trained Sceptic you can be totally free from fear and pain and anything that appears to you to be a bad outcome.
Repeat this process for anything you could care to want or fear in life and you will find nothing but peace and tranquillity.
Three. Feel nothing. If you are a very well-trained Sceptic then you will reject the reality of appearances to such an extent that no appearance will have the power to affect you in any way whatsoever. In the end, you will feel nothing, since nothing can make you feel. I leave it to you to decide whether this is an admirable or desirable ideal. It is certainly a picture of peace and tranquillity. In the absence of feeling there is a kind of apathetic contentment. There is security in this imperturbability.
But is it worth it? To gain freedom from trouble at the cost of losing everything good in life? To gain freedom from duty and responsibility by rejecting the reality of any moral obligation? To gain freedom from suffering by being indifferent to it, in ourselves and in others? To gain freedom from the burden of knowledge and the search for truth by denying the possibility of any knowledge and any truth?
I don’t know that the benefit is worth the cost. And neither does the Sceptic, since they don’t know anything anyway. I leave it to your judgement. I’m inclined to say that there’s more to life than nothing. I’m inclined to say that, whilst scepticism can be a good thing, there can be too much of a good thing. I’m inclined to say that we are always accountable to the truth. And so by all means use scepticism as a tool to reject the junk, but be careful to find and keep what really matters.
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