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RE: Why are you so sure you know what you think you know?
You trust your senses?
The only things you truly can know are those things which you experienced first hand with your own senses.
Even perception is malleable.
I don't trust my senses completely, but they are the only tools I have. I then apply my mind. Yet, yes I always am skeptical of my thoughts. I perceive things with my senses and try to make sense of what I see, yet unlike most of society I do treat my speculations as just that. Speculating. So it may not be true, and is certainly based upon my senses and whatever limited knowledge I have to apply to interpreting them.
excellent I was trying to think of a quote(socrates I think) about the first step of knowledge being that you can't know anything with certainty.
which of course doesn't mean you should stop learning but just to view your knowledge with humbleness. My favourite challenge to orthodox thought is the "Electric Universe"
Our belief about what is informs our perceptions. I have spent a great deal of time in utterly dark forests, immersed in fear. As I frantically considered the things I was fearing, I realized that the only reason I was afraid was because I (rightly) believed that I was vulnerable in the darkness to the many predators that were about.
I was in Alaska, so I wasn't just fantasizing about predators.
This same principle is at work in all our considerations of the world we perceive, and we interpret our perceptions based on what world we believe in.
I have learned that fear is a good thing, but that reason is a better thing. We fear the darkness for good reasons, and snapping twigs set our hair on end, because we will die if the bear comes for our leftovers.
So do the dishes. By taking reasonable steps to mitigate danger, we can overwhelm fear with reason, and then enjoy the phenomenon as we gain insight into our beliefs, and our mind itself.
That fear of the darkness is now a comfortable condition for me. It's like having a friend over for dinner.
I've spent a lot of time running around in dark forests too. I lived in one of the least populated counties of the United States a good portion of my life that is deep in the middle of the San Juan mountains and heavily forested. I came to love the dark. :) I could actually see the stars very nicely there... in the city I can barely see them.
It feels like a comfy blanket is wrapped around you =)