Our problem is that the human brain is hardwired for simplicity, and therefore we rarely notice how our abstractions are in fact meaningless. We crave certainty (because it requires less cognitive effort) but our words are in reality too vague to permit such a condition. Most people, however, lack both the intellectual capacity and the emotional stability necessary to cope with ambiguity and provisionality. Hence we will always be wading through the quicksand of arbitrary beliefs and fuzzy thinking. Words are not very good at conveying meaningfully precise ideas but they are quite good at stirring emotions - and that's where most people spend most of their time: in an emotional soup, flailing and floundering and shouting loudly words that seem to them to have meaning but which are in reality quite empty.