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	The Benefit of Doubt By John Patrick Shanley Boston Globe [United States] February 6, 2007 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/ 2007/02/06/the_benefit_of_doubt/?p1=email_to_a_friend There Are two predominant ways of dealing in this country. There is the culture of doubt, and there is the culture of dogma. Both are remedies to the problem of choice. It is indicative that one of the most incendiary and divisive issues of the last many years swirls around the word choice. Should a woman have the right to choose? Are you pro-life or pro-choice? How would you respond? For the majority of you, you've already been asked many times if you're pro-life or pro-choice and you already have your answer. Most people know that pro-life is code for one thing, and pro-choice is code for its opposite. When you're asked if you're pro-life or pro-choice, you are being asked to declare yourself politically. It is a political question that defines reality as an either/or proposition. And it's a bit of a trick. My impression is that people still answer when asked, but they've grown weary of the question; it's inhuman. We know instinctively there's more to life. Religion is often the arbiter in these matters. We look to our church, temple, or mosque for a moral ruling. I remember at my church school in the Bronx a priest described a dilemma to my eighth-grade class. "Your wife and your mother are both drowning and you can save only one. Which one do you save?" Most of us answered that we would save our moms. The priest said: "Wrong! Once you are married, your primary responsibility is to your wife. You should save your wife." I remember picturing the dark waters closing over my mother's head as I held a shivering indistinct female. Then I went to a Catholic high school. In one of my textbooks, it had a section on logic. In this section, there was a list of fallacies. One leapt out at me. It was called the Limited Choice Fallacy. An orator or teacher or politician or priest offers you a choice, but the choice is in itself misleading. My mind flew back to my drowning wife and mother. I had been played! I had been a victim of the Limited Choice Fallacy. Another question out there, more immediate at the moment, is Iraq. "Should we stay in Iraq or should we get out?" It's an irritating question because again it is not human. It appears to be direct and clear, but it leaps over everything important that needs to be discussed and understood. It's dogma framed as choice. So I have a suggestion. Don't fall for it. Responsible, thinking people do not lead a yes-or-no existence. Responsible, thinking people do not have to reduce complicated subjects down to "for" or "against." How did the church scandals happen? How could they have been so extensive? Why were the victims treated as culprits, and the culprits protected? Well, people made up their minds. They made a choice. People decided who to trust and what to believe. And anything they saw or heard that did not conform to those choices, those facts simply were not allowed to exist. There is a tendency in our time and perhaps throughout time to simplify. We all want it simple.We want to know what to do. A great communicator is one who can break it down for you -- "Just giveme the bottom line." "Cut to the chase." Well, life and morality and governance, adequate citizenship, is not about "the chase." Just as having a spirituallife is not about making up your mind once and for all. True spirituality is present, it's alive and observant. Doubt is not paralysis. Certainty is. Doubt keeps the doors and windows open. Belief is one room with no way out. Do not let others impose a polarity of response on you. You need not live a reactive life. Don't look to have life explained to you, presented to you. Live the life that emanates from your interior greatness. Be an overwhelming bounty of impressions, ideas, conflicting theories, and let the propellant behind all this be generosity. A giving. Never look to the opposite side to change. It is always your turn to change. Society begins and ends with each of us. If you want to reverse some frustrating polarization of thought you encounter in others, I invite you to passionately doubt everything you believe. John Patrick Shanley is the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of "Doubt."
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