Recently, I came across an old journal of mine. To read my thoughts from 15 years ago had its own sort of reckoning. Journals are so often full of doubt, but maybe that's a good thing.
Doubt is Better Than
Certainty
Milton Glaser
Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what
you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that,
spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you
have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a
practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to
experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions
questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much.
I think that being skeptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is
essential. Of course we must know the difference between skepticism and
cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the
world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins. And then in a very real
way, solving any problem is more important than being right. There is a
significant sense of self-righteousness in both the art and design world.
Perhaps it begins at school. Art school often begins with the Ayn Rand model of
the single personality resisting the ideas of the surrounding culture. The
theory of the avant-garde is that as an individual you can transform the world,
which is true up to a point. One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute
certainty. Schools encourage the idea of not compromising and defending your
work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usually all about the nature of
compromise.
