Dubito ergo?

Most people are familiar with Descartes' famous "quote" or should I say insight. Somehow folks think that "Cogito, ergo sum." (I think...therefore I am.) somehow proves we really exist. I learned this phrase in philosophy class but never really understood how a person could reason that some kind of surity about thinking, truely proved his or her existence.

Then I read an article that explaned the Descartes whole thought process. Descarte questioned his own existence. Even if he thought that he might really exist, he was unable to prove this conjecture to himself in hard and fast manner. Then he hit upon the central crux of his thinking process. He doubted that he was thinking, he doubted that he existed or could prove his existence. His doubt was the thought process that he could say with surity that really did exist. Even though nothing else seemed proveable, he knew that he doubted. Doubting was the one thinking process of fundemental surity. Doubting is thinking, therefore he knows that he doubts and thinks, therefore he knows that he exists. How ironic that the fundemental thought process that led humankind into the Enlightenment was doubt.

I bring this thinking into my own world view in several ways. I know that my subjective view on things is only that. It is a limited one person view confined by the limited experiences, prejudices and physicality of one person. So I am in a continuous state of doubt. I think of the opposite. Those people who are sure of everything. I think of those institutions that preach such surity. To me they are the most narrow and closed minded of all people.

I prefer to live my life in an open and doubting position. Perhaps I raise issues of trust. And it is true, I trust propoganda few institutions although I rely on so many of them. I trust individual people but that is an affair of the heart, rather than the mind.