Certainty, the 8th Deadly Sin
Loyalty to the Spirit
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
– Friedrich Nietzsche
I wake to a question: What was I most loyal to? It is not the brittle constructs of certainty, nor the charismatic figures flickering in and out of my life. My loyalty has always been to something deeper—the Pale—or what some may call anything from the spirit to God, or even revelations imparted through art and science. The Pale, as I understand it, is not just a void but a paradoxical space: it embodies connection and dissolution, the source of meaning and its unmaking.
Certainty, however, perverts these loyalties. It binds us to others yet gives them tools to harm us, weaponizing trust. I once placed such trust in a man who betrayed me, wielding our connection like a blade. He exploited the quantum threads that bind us—the unseen forces of entanglement that make us both profoundly connected and deeply vulnerable. Certainty emboldened him, as it so often does, to act without question.
We call this betrayal sin, faithlessness, or manipulation, depending on our framework. But strip away the religious or philosophical language, and the experience remains unchanged. Certainty, with its false absolutes, masks the fragility and nuance of our shared search for meaning. In doing so, it becomes the deadliest betrayal of all—because it denies us the right to question and the freedom to evolve.
The Science of Wonder
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
– Galileo Galilei
Certainty is the antithesis of wonder, and its rigidity is the enemy of discovery. Science and religion are not adversaries, but when certainty infiltrates either, they lose their vitality. Both are travelers on parallel paths, kneeling before the same altar of uncertainty, asking the same timeless question: Do I matter?
Humanity’s oldest question echoes through every sacred text, every mathematical theorem, and every whispered prayer. Whether through the mythos of gods, the precision of relativity, or the fleeting chaos of quantum mechanics, our inquiry remains identical: Am I significant in this vast, indifferent universe?
Cavemen etched their fears and longings onto stone walls. Physicists fire particles into colliders, searching for patterns in the subatomic void. Both acts are sacred rituals, attempts to illuminate the dark. Certainty would extinguish this light. Meaning is not revealed in a divine flash or final formula; it is constructed, piece by piece, through humility and doubt. Certainty claims to offer answers but instead silences the questions that give life its depth.
Love and the Pale
"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
– Carl Jung
If love is the light, certainty is the shadow it casts. Love, like the Pale, is intangible, ineffable, and endlessly mysterious. It cannot be reduced to a formula, yet certainty seeks to define it, box it, and control it.
In the game of existence, love is the Pale—a void that connects and consumes in equal measure. It binds us to one another, even when the cost of such binding is pain. Our families, friends, and children—all are held in this fragile web of connection. Yet it is in this fragility that love finds its power. Certainty diminishes love’s vitality by demanding control, stripping away its mystery and reducing it to a rigid set of rules.
As parents, we are tasked with holding this mystery gently. We cannot truly explain it, so we call it many things—God, the spirit, or a neural or quantum phenomenon. But our duty is not to define it; it is to guide our children through its paradoxes. Certainty would teach them to cling to answers; instead, we must teach them to embrace questions.
The Weight of Disappointment
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
– Friedrich Nietzsche
If my children come to me one day, professing beliefs I find untenable, my disappointment will not stem from the beliefs themselves but from their failure to question them. Certainty often masquerades as faith, convincing us to settle for flawed answers rather than grapple with the discomfort of the unknown. If they adopt unexamined faith, I will feel I have failed them—not because they believe differently, but because they surrendered too easily, retreating into the comfort of dogma.
To live honestly is to live with scrutiny. To hold one’s beliefs to the fire is not to destroy them but to forge them stronger. This is the opposite of certainty, which seeks to shield beliefs from scrutiny, mistaking fragility for sanctity. I owe my children this challenge—not out of judgment, but out of love.
Yet, it is not for me to impose my version of truth. Certainty in my own ideals would be its own failure. My role is not to dictate their answers but to encourage their pursuit of integrity: a life lived earnestly, with an eye always toward the unknown.
A Final Question
"There are no facts, only interpretations."
– Friedrich Nietzsche
The audacity to believe and teach certainty is staggering. To describe the Pale—or any metaphysical reality—while carrying the baggage of violence, exclusion, and dogma, is an act of hubris. Is your culture worth the harm it perpetuates? Or is this pain merely a necessary evil in exploring the question of meaning itself?
Simply because religion has carried the weight of this baggage does not mean we are doomed to perpetuate it. Humanity can transcend its traditions. While there is beauty to be found in the pursuit of meaning, I find it unfathomable to live without relentlessly pursuing unvarnished truth. To settle for the flawed and damaged religion of one’s childhood, solely to escape the discomfort of uncertainty, is to abdicate the responsibility of inquiry.
If you cannot prove your religion’s universality, I ask: Why is it worth living? Does it contribute to truth or obscure it? A religion that cannot extend beyond its cultural confines is not a school of thought worth pursuing.
We must live by ideals. It is not only necessary; it is imperative. And the ideal I live by is this: Certainty is the 8th deadly sin. It is a red herring in the pursuit of truth. It can—and must—be relinquished without diminishing the realities of spirituality, personal experience, and connection to the ineffable. It is only by shedding certainty that we come closer to truth itself.