Question Uncertainty

Issue 388 of Dense Discovery — one of my favourite newsletters, which I recommend you subscribe to — describes the book How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World That Demands Answers by Simone Stolzoff as follows:

A mix of reportage and self-help, it makes the case that learning to sit with the unknown is one of the most essential skills of our time.

And this is the publisher’s summary of How to Not Know:

A guide to dealing with uncertainty at a time when our lives have never felt less certain.

From our careers to our politics to our personal lives, the future is unknown. And yet, our capacity to tolerate this uncertainty is in decline. How to Not Know will help you prepare for and even appreciate the uncertainty that surrounds us.

Through gripping stories of people grappling with big problems without easy answers, from an economist trying to predict the next market crash to an island nation reckoning with the existential impact of climate change, acclaimed journalist Simone Stolzoff shows how to develop comfort with ambiguity and build tolerance for the unknown.

Blending engrossing storytelling, research, and practical insights, How to Not Know is an essential guide to navigating uncertainty with courage and clarity.

Reading this, I keep coming back to the same thought: we’re giving in to uncertainty too easily.

Whenever we encounter uncertainty, we should question instead of “navigating” it. We should ask “Why does it exist in this situation or scenario?”

There’s a difference between uncertainty that is natural and uncertainty that is artificial.

You simply can’t know what’s going to happen — that’s natural. The future was, is and will always be unknown. How you make sense of that depends on whether you’re an eternal pessimist, optimist or nihilist.

When uncertainty is artificial, it’s created with the intention of exerting power over people. It can keep you small — cautious about taking risks, cautious about taking action that may destabilise your already fragile situation. Job insecurity. Lack of rule of law, of accountability, of trust. Lack of human interaction, of tolerance, of decency and common sense. Selfishness and lack of concern for others. Lack of ownership and strategy in leadership. Lack of commitment, of willingness to take risks and show direction. The list goes on. Much of the uncertainty we’re struggling with is systemic.

Or, as one reviewer of the book puts it:

The apolitical approach simply doesn’t work when another reason that the threshold for uncertainty intolerance is so low is because in our current times, social stratification is getting even wider and starker, tyranny all the more blatant, and it’s never been more obvious that “justice” and “law” do not exist if they do not serve the powerful and wealthy.

Books like How to Not Know shift responsibility onto us. The author accepts the fact that “our lives have never felt less certain” and concludes that we should fix ourselves to become more adaptable and resilient to uncertainty.

Systemic uncertainty is treated as a given, and the individual is expected to reframe how they deal with it. The solution is not systemic change but cultivating resilience, finding coping strategies, and taking personal responsibility to mitigate the negative impacts of the status quo.

This is the core problem with the concept of resilience: blame and responsibility readily shift to the individual, rather than addressing the underlying structural problems of a personal or work environment, community or society. Everyone has a baseline of resilience, but that baseline shouldn’t be constantly challenged. We should be reducing the factors that stretch it, not being told to increase our capacity for it.

I don’t blame the author for this perspective. Individualism — specifically, individual responsibility — has been institutionalised through the political and economic narratives that have dominated Western societies since the 1970s. More than fifty years later, it’s systemic reality, however you dress it up. It’s a reminder, though, of how ingrained these thought patterns are and how important it is to challenge them.

We should reject the idea that systems, environments — and, I’d go as far as saying, reality itself — are immutable. We should see everything around us as malleable. We have inherent agency.

Question uncertainty, not yourself

We need to stop blaming ourselves and our supposed inability to cope with uncertainty. Instead, we should question why we don’t have more certainty, and find ways to stop its decline — or even increase it.

For the big questions facing society, the solution does involve personal “courage and clarity” — but not in the sense of dealing with uncertainty on your own. If you struggle with uncertainty — natural or artificial — there’s a good chance others do too. Collective action, as a community of individuals, is a powerful force. We can work together to improve everyone’s circumstances. Get together; help each other.

Yes, there are things outside our control. But many things aren’t, even when we’re convinced they are. We should feel empowered to work together to create certainty — and multiply it.

Our capacity to tolerate uncertainty isn’t “shrinking” — uncertainty itself is intentionally growing. Learning to “sit with the unknown” should be replaced with getting together to address it.