It is not clear why the FBI settled their gaze on the lank haired, Bruce Ivans. On the surface he was a peaceful, hard-working lackey at the US government’s bio-defence lab, forever underpaid and exploited by a government who’s own fiscal largesse is primarily aimed at boosting their own retirement accounts. And yet Bruce caught the hot breath of the FBI. He was wire-tapped, followed, gazed at through high-precision binoculars, muttered about in stuffy patrol cars, leading to his good name being shrouded in suspicion. Now the FBI may have had good reason, who knows, but the whiff of suspicion is something that needs to be explored, it being, an emotion, a feeling, a sense of cold judgement on ‘another’; someone whose actions, air, or gait stirs in us a feeling of unease. “Guilty” one might mutter over the chilli Doritos, the crime being irrelevant to the matter at hand. Deep in the gut there is a feeling that something is ‘off’. Like looking at old photos of Prince Andrew partying in New York City.
Suspicion itself is a cognition, a mental activity that deals with knowledge. Cognitions are deep psychological processes that collect, store, retrieve and transform information. They basically help us make sense of the world. Cognitive processes can be neatly filed by their use and function: think perception, which deals with all sensory information. Attention helps prioritise what’s important. Memory deals with retaining, storing and retrieving information and thinking, hopefully, stirs up psychological activities where ideas, concepts and mental pictures are kneaded, and dusted in fresh insight and piercing, original thought.
Suspicion, at its core, is a cognition of mistrust, where one person has deep misgivings about the honesty of another person. There is no proof, no grainy CTTV footage, no tearful admission. Nothing. It’s a feeling. A doubt. In the US, the police can even gander down the street eating doughnuts and then drop, said doughnuts, and break into a sweaty jog and wheeze and arrest anyone they think might be up to no good. The courts accept the term reasonable suspicion which, given the broad church of political views and itchy trigger fingers found across the nation’s police force, can lead to all sorts of trouble and awkward press conferences for those higher up the food chain. The courts do like it to be more than a ‘hunch’, but either way, don’t cross the road until the green man flashes. And don’t look cocky.
The respected philosopher Francis Bacon, as you might imagine, spent many an hour mulling the, all too often, uneasy feeling, of suspicion. Indeed, after a particularly bleak weekend of wet dog walks and underwhelming company, he returned to his desk one Monday and chopped out an essay entitled ‘Of Suspicion’. For those who haven’t read it, he wrote, in tight tense ink, that he thought suspicions needed to be repressed. Yes, repressed, bottled up. Ignored. Bacon reasoned that if such feelings were not contained, then they would run amok. They would take over the mind and potentially run the risk of stumbling into a state of outright tyranny. Yes, tyranny. Think paranoid King, or anxious spouse whose text messages remain unread. After lunch, Bacon got up a head of steam, suggesting that the root of suspicion was, in fact, not a stray cat of emotion, but a lack of knowledge. Ignorance. A souped-up fug that was based on not having all the pieces to the puzzle. The answer then, was simple. Learn more about the issue that has caused the state of sticky-up hair and wild eyes. If a husband is worried about his wife’s male friends, ask questions. Bacon then left it hanging, offering no suggestions as to what questions, and whether asking the wrong question may cause an escalation into a different state, like rage. Either way, the conclusion, the take-away, for those now planning to skewer the other half in a dim-lit larder, is to loosen up. Ask questions. Be frank. It’s likely not as bad as the voices in the head suggest. Whilst that all might set the mojo at ease, beware the warning of none other than Shakespeare who muttered, one evening, to an impressionable barmaid: “suspicion always haunts the guilty mind”. Hmm.
Suspicion, then, is fuelled by doubt, serving up an awkward mental state where the mind is suspended between one or more contradictory propositions and where bleak, uncertainty prevails. Essentially it is the stumbling around the dead space between belief, and disbelief. The old stoat Rene Descartes, the itchy French philosopher who is widely considered to be a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy, and whose views upset so many of his predecessors – see the opening section of Passions of the Soul for details – frequently employed Cartesian doubt as a go-to methodological tool in his deep philosophical meanderings. At its core, Cartesian doubt, or universal or hyperbolic doubt, is a process of being outright sceptical of the truth of one’s own beliefs. Descartes was of the view that this was needed, essential even, to discover the truth. Cue lots of mugs and mouse mats: cogito ergo sum. Or for the purist: dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum. Which basically boils down to “I exist”. Descartes hoped, that living life like this, one would be able to eliminate all belief that it is possible to doubt, leaving only foundational beliefs. It is from these foundational beliefs that one can then embark on one’s liberating, lifelong quest for knowledge. An approach, you quietly mutter, that is to a ‘T’, the essence even, of the continental schools of philosophy. Bang on.
And what of Ghandi? What did the political and spiritual leader of the non-violent Independence movement have to say on it? For leading any independence movement, whether it be a protest at a primary school, workplace, or liberating a nation from abject tyranny, one is quickly going to run into some salty types. Ghandi was emphatic. As you’d imagine. If suspicions linger around any person’s motives, then everything they do, everything, good or bad, will quickly become tainted with mistrust and uncertainty.
Which makes getting yourself promoted at work, that much harder.
Be good.
Hepburnsays 