Presumption has a dual character and performs a dual function in personal universes. It underlies both hope and hopelessness. You awoke this morning with both stated and unstated goals. Maybe on another morning, you had no desire to live the day. In both instances, you presumed.
“Huh?”
You might, for example, ask yourself why suicide was called the “unforgivable sin” in the Middle Ages?
“No,” you say, “I get it. In the Christian tradition, suicide represents an extreme manifestation of hopelessness, that there is ‘no way out’ of a dilemma, that life can only continue as it is or get worse. I get it. It’s a matter of presumption. No one, in this kind of thinking, not even God, can come to the rescue. For Christians, it defines the most negative presumption, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the sin of Pride. Pride makes a fallen Adam and Eve, both seeking equality with God to self-determine what is Good or Evil, to make a universe in their own image, to declare power over life itself. The presumptive, the prideful, say, ‘It is I who determine. It is I who state what is and what can or cannot be.’”
Yes, it’s presumption that allows us to say, for better or for worse, what the nature of our immediate and distant futures are. We set out to get a high school diploma, maybe to get a certificate for a skill, or for a set of academic degrees, all with the idea that ‘in the future’ we will be such-n-such, have such-n-such, and do such-n-such. Hope is the product of such presumption. But at every setback, there lies that other side of presumption, the side that says, “There is no hope.”
You interject, “Again, no. Sometimes external forces eliminate the possibility of fulfilling hope. Chance alone plays a role in thwarting whether or not we continue doing something. Maybe the line for a particular job is just too long when we get there and the applicants just too numerous. It isn’t always presumption that keeps one from achieving all goals. At times, a stark realism sets in as we see possibilities dwindle and disappear.”
But presumption is always in the background, and its dark side is pride and its potential to engender hopelessness. Think the American legal system, for example, where “presumption of innocence” plays a key role. The whole “justice is blind” principle is based on excluding negative presumption. For those who defend themselves and others, presumption serves as the base of a legal defense. If there’s no hope of winning or of manipulating the outcome, why enter the arena of justice?
And back to suicide: You can see that regardless of religious beliefs, people who don’t commit suicide say the act is one of extreme presumption, that the actor proclaims ultimate control over life and takes the place of any deity. And for those who believe in God, the actor, in committing suicide, announces by the act that even if there is a God, then that God is what the Deists of the eighteenth century acknowledged. He made the “clock” we call the universe, wound it up, and started its ticking before abandoning the mechanism to a determined unfolding of time and events. The act presumes no Providence, no intervening, and no need for prayer. How else do we characterize such a final, such an irrevocable, act like suicide?
But putting the notion of suicide aside, think of daily suicides that don’t involve life itself, but those events in life, things once hoped for and then abandoned, swallowed by the Black Hole of Negative Presumption because we might have decided the future of our personal universe. Everyone’s universe has at least some small black holes down which individual hopes, if not HOPE itself, can vanish. There’s a necessity in all of us to steer ourselves around the gravity of such holes before we get too close to escape.
And that’s a problem because presumption, which gives us energy to steer our course and avoid such bottomless pits also robs us of that energy by playing that dual role. We’re like quantum physicists that recognize the duality of light as wave and particle. The physicists that followed Niels Bohr and his Copenhagen Interpretation noted that it isn’t until we make an observation that light’s character as particle or wave is identifiable. And for us, it isn’t until we make the measurement of our lives that we recognize the character of our presumption as one of continuing wavelike hope, or discrete particles that smash into a black surface of hopelessness.
If I could make that determined world of the deists, my “clock” would have wound into it the wavelike presumption that underlies hope. Yes, it is contradictory. How could one have both a determined universe and hopeful inhabitants. If every event is determined, then despair, the act of Pride, is inevitable. Okay, I wouldn’t make a very good “God.” I admit that. Every universe I would create would have flaws. I could not, as Pangloss says in Voltaire’s Candide, make the “best of all possible worlds.” Nevertheless, I would still impose a wavelike presumption of hope and eliminate the particles of hopelessness that interfere with the search to reach goals that keeps all of us from committing something like that final, irrevocable act in the Black Hole of Suicide.
And if you were such a deity, would you incorporate presumption in your creation? What would a world without presumption look like? You might say, “That’s not even possible.” But remember, you are the deity, and you get to make your world. Does it include wavelike hope on the sea of life, or individual particles of hopelessness? Both? If the latter, then we’re back to a mysterious duality that can drive us equally to successes or losses.
“Huh?”
You might, for example, ask yourself why suicide was called the “unforgivable sin” in the Middle Ages?
“No,” you say, “I get it. In the Christian tradition, suicide represents an extreme manifestation of hopelessness, that there is ‘no way out’ of a dilemma, that life can only continue as it is or get worse. I get it. It’s a matter of presumption. No one, in this kind of thinking, not even God, can come to the rescue. For Christians, it defines the most negative presumption, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the sin of Pride. Pride makes a fallen Adam and Eve, both seeking equality with God to self-determine what is Good or Evil, to make a universe in their own image, to declare power over life itself. The presumptive, the prideful, say, ‘It is I who determine. It is I who state what is and what can or cannot be.’”
Yes, it’s presumption that allows us to say, for better or for worse, what the nature of our immediate and distant futures are. We set out to get a high school diploma, maybe to get a certificate for a skill, or for a set of academic degrees, all with the idea that ‘in the future’ we will be such-n-such, have such-n-such, and do such-n-such. Hope is the product of such presumption. But at every setback, there lies that other side of presumption, the side that says, “There is no hope.”
You interject, “Again, no. Sometimes external forces eliminate the possibility of fulfilling hope. Chance alone plays a role in thwarting whether or not we continue doing something. Maybe the line for a particular job is just too long when we get there and the applicants just too numerous. It isn’t always presumption that keeps one from achieving all goals. At times, a stark realism sets in as we see possibilities dwindle and disappear.”
But presumption is always in the background, and its dark side is pride and its potential to engender hopelessness. Think the American legal system, for example, where “presumption of innocence” plays a key role. The whole “justice is blind” principle is based on excluding negative presumption. For those who defend themselves and others, presumption serves as the base of a legal defense. If there’s no hope of winning or of manipulating the outcome, why enter the arena of justice?
And back to suicide: You can see that regardless of religious beliefs, people who don’t commit suicide say the act is one of extreme presumption, that the actor proclaims ultimate control over life and takes the place of any deity. And for those who believe in God, the actor, in committing suicide, announces by the act that even if there is a God, then that God is what the Deists of the eighteenth century acknowledged. He made the “clock” we call the universe, wound it up, and started its ticking before abandoning the mechanism to a determined unfolding of time and events. The act presumes no Providence, no intervening, and no need for prayer. How else do we characterize such a final, such an irrevocable, act like suicide?
But putting the notion of suicide aside, think of daily suicides that don’t involve life itself, but those events in life, things once hoped for and then abandoned, swallowed by the Black Hole of Negative Presumption because we might have decided the future of our personal universe. Everyone’s universe has at least some small black holes down which individual hopes, if not HOPE itself, can vanish. There’s a necessity in all of us to steer ourselves around the gravity of such holes before we get too close to escape.
And that’s a problem because presumption, which gives us energy to steer our course and avoid such bottomless pits also robs us of that energy by playing that dual role. We’re like quantum physicists that recognize the duality of light as wave and particle. The physicists that followed Niels Bohr and his Copenhagen Interpretation noted that it isn’t until we make an observation that light’s character as particle or wave is identifiable. And for us, it isn’t until we make the measurement of our lives that we recognize the character of our presumption as one of continuing wavelike hope, or discrete particles that smash into a black surface of hopelessness.
If I could make that determined world of the deists, my “clock” would have wound into it the wavelike presumption that underlies hope. Yes, it is contradictory. How could one have both a determined universe and hopeful inhabitants. If every event is determined, then despair, the act of Pride, is inevitable. Okay, I wouldn’t make a very good “God.” I admit that. Every universe I would create would have flaws. I could not, as Pangloss says in Voltaire’s Candide, make the “best of all possible worlds.” Nevertheless, I would still impose a wavelike presumption of hope and eliminate the particles of hopelessness that interfere with the search to reach goals that keeps all of us from committing something like that final, irrevocable act in the Black Hole of Suicide.
And if you were such a deity, would you incorporate presumption in your creation? What would a world without presumption look like? You might say, “That’s not even possible.” But remember, you are the deity, and you get to make your world. Does it include wavelike hope on the sea of life, or individual particles of hopelessness? Both? If the latter, then we’re back to a mysterious duality that can drive us equally to successes or losses.
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