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Without doubt, too many people live without doubt.
What they need is a healthy dose of skepticism.
But of what? One lifetime allows a limited number
of grand speculations, floated then exploded
And without Grendel, there is no Beowulf
At the end of this road, you could become
disenchanted with disenchantment,
skeptical of skepticism itself
The immune system you’ve so patiently reared
turns on itself. You become possessed
by an unquenchable urge to affirm something
(Jung with his UFOs, Pauling with vitamin C)
and there is no logical reason to expect that logic
can produce anything worthy of your first Yes
Science can take you to the brink
of quantum uncertainty, where maybe
or maybe not your cat dies, while the rousing revels
of faerie worshippers beckon from behind the walls
of their imaginary castles.
Plato said this would happen
But in fact what will happen,
some lucky prick will fall out of his tree
all tangled up in the true theory of everything
and leave it to the skeptics (and his mother)
to spend several centuries cleaning up the debris.
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