#2 - The Certainty of Uncertainty

THE CERTAINTY OF UNCERTAINTY

“We don’t know.”

For some reason, that’s a phrase I just don’t hear very often nowadays.

We don’t know.

Honestly, it’s an idea that we find difficult to accept. We demand answers to our challenges. When a disaster, terrorist attack or similar calamity occurs, our immediate reaction is that someone messed up. Somebody dropped the ball. It’s punishable human error. Sometimes, it’s true – people are often sloppy and even criminally negligent; but often things are so complex or our knowledge so limited that we just don’t know what’s coming. Oh sure… in hindsight, it seems pretty obvious. But beforehand, it was really difficult to predict. The bottom line: “we don’t know” isn’t good enough anymore. We have evolved into uncompromising control freaks. In our minds, tragic surprises should not occur, the stock market should not crash, security vulnerabilities should never be exposed and people should not suffer. Today, we expect medicine to defeat all physical sickness; psychiatry all mental illness; and the earth sciences all natural disasters. That is literally our collective expectation.

As a result, “we don’t know” doesn’t sit well. What is this … the Dark Ages?

“We don’t know” seems like a step backwards from progress; it means admitting weakness. Have you seen the miracles we can now do in laboratories? Did you forget we’ve designed and sent spaceships to mars and beyond? The human mind and ingenuity can conquer any problem in its path. We reject “we don’t know.”

Perhaps this visceral reaction to “we don’t know” will get us all into trouble… perhaps it already has. When uncertainty is viewed as unacceptable weakness, I start to see things in black and white. “I am right; you are wrong.” Doesn’t that sound familiar? Could be the mantra of our era: I am right; you are wrong. I’ve left no room for doubt; I see little point in learning or listening. Growth mindset has been lost, since growth mindset starts with the acknowledgement that “I don’t know.” Compromise becomes a vice, a dirty word. We modern people have evolved to lack something critical – humility. “We don’t know” requires an attitude of humility, a perspective of limitation. But, let’s face it…. we aren’t very good at the humility thing nowadays.

When I say all this, I’m speaking especially of myself. I don’t do the “submission” thing very easily. Before I can accept advice or submit to someone else’s opinion, it must make sense to me. When I say it had to make sense, I mean you had to “prove” it to me. Convince me. Demanding certainty got me into spiritual trouble. I felt the pull of unavoidable questions – questions of meaning and questions of purpose – but I struggled to find convincing answers. The only certainty I found to these questions was uncertainty at every turn. I discovered the Certainty of Uncertainty.

Let me explain. At different junctures, I have asked myself core questions, the same ones you probably do as well. Why am I here on earth? How should I spend the days and years of my life? I faced so many decisions – some of them big, life-changing decisions. Well, what values should guide those choices? Stepping back, I’ve asked myself how should the world look; and how should I act and behave based on that vision of the world?

Whoa! Here I go with the overthinking again! But seriously, where do these questions come from? For starters, it’s pretty obvious that I want to find meaning in my life. Actually, I need to find meaning in my life; to find purpose to guide me through this journey. Look around. Conscious meaning is what makes us unique on this earth. We appear to be the only beings hardwired to search for meaning. Why is that? Well, I am self-aware. I analyze the past. My family will tell you I do that too much. I constantly analyze the past and worry about and plan for the future. We all do. Because I am self-aware, I am also conscious of time: past, present, and future. And that consciousness demands direction and decisions. Decisions about how I act. Decisions about relationships. Decisions about passing on ideas and values to children and the next generation.

This consciousness, this self-awareness is a crazy gift. Is there anything we do that doesn’t leverage this unique ability? Those miracles in the lab I mentioned before or designing and programming that Mars rover – those all originate in the creativity of our consciousness. While the rest of the animal world appears to function primarily on instinct, we have the ability – no, we are compelled – to imagine, think, rationalize, and choose. Our self-awareness, our consciousness is a superpower that we often take for granted. It is the superpower that gives us free-will. And like all superpowers, it can be used for both good and evil - it can be both a blessing and a curse: it is the source of all science, medicine, and engineering, as well as incredible acts of kindness, healing and grace; but when misused, it has created and resulted in unimaginable devastation and suffering. Real torture and cruelty. Truly a double-edged sword. Our ancestors recognized this gift of self-awareness early on and gave it a name: the human soul. It is what makes us… us; what separates us from the other created beings in the world.

It was two essential aspects of my conscious soul that caused my spiritual breakdown. I found myself compelled to consider important questions related to meaning and purpose; but at the same time, remained frustrated and unsatisfied if I couldn’t definitively answer those questions. Because it wants control and seeks to manage my life, to remove impending danger and avoid setbacks, my soul rejected this Certainty of Uncertainty idea in my search for purpose and meaning. My soul wants to know everything, wants to rationally wrap my mind around these questions and answers. And that is what led to my spiritual breakdown. Although I lived it every day of my youth, I wanted certainty that my lifestyle was authentic and profitable in different ways. We all make sacrifices in pursuit of a framework of meaning. What underlying truths support those sacrifices?

What I realized is that I desperately want answers to the questions. Concrete answers. Solid answers. If I am going to base my life direction and values on something, if I am going to dedicate my life to a group of ideas, I want to be certain. But that’s the rub. We … don’t… know. I couldn’t find a safe harbor from my doubts.

The Certainty of Uncertainty means that we simply don’t have proof, objective proof, that any framework of meaning in this world is THE truth. We talk about faith filling in the gap beyond certainty. But that was not enough for me. I wanted certainty in my Faith. If you review human history, the desire to be certain in one’s Faith, and by certain I mean certainty in a scientific way, has caused humankind to exaggerate and overstate what it knows. It also causes people to dismiss and demonize other Faiths that contradict their own. I’m going to say something very unpleasant for someone who grew up committed to religion and who majored in philosophy: the history of human religion and philosophy is filled with overconfidence, exaggeration and delusional exclusivity… that history has repeatedly been a blurring of Faith into certainty. From “I believe”… to “I know… and you don’t.”

I’ve never been a cynical person, but you can see that cynicism eclipsed my lifelong, inherited Faith. My point here is not to list all the doubts that kept me up at night. It is simply to highlight that if you’ve found yourself feeling paralyzed by doubt or more likely, feeling inadequate because another person’s certainty of purpose just doesn’t feel achievable, know that you are not alone. Or even further, understand that those feelings are an important confirmation that you are being honest with yourself.

Of course, such affirmations didn’t provide any comfort as I descended the rabbit hole. I realize now that I suffered a spiritual breakdown, similar in many ways to a mental breakdown, brought on by a collapse of my framework of meaning. I felt very alone. An idea, the Certainty of Uncertainty – shook the foundations of my faith. I was raised in a devout and orthodox environment. Rich in ritual and study. Was it all a house of cards? A house built on unstable sand?

Without a doubt (no pun intended), this wasn’t one of the emotional high points of my life. I felt lost. Much of the time, I walked around in a fog. As if I was trying to navigate but had lost my GPS.

Let’s end this podcast by returning to the image of the Faith Garden. A few years ago, the front lawn I so meticulously planted and watered caught a fungus, and rapidly died. I mean the entire thing disappeared. People would drive by the house and stop to gawk and even point out their windows at my lawn, which resembled an over pastured cow-patch. A humiliating dust bowl of a suburban lawn. On the advice of a horticulturalist, I replanted the lawn in early September, never believing it would regrow quickly. But by the end of October, I had a thriving green lawn again. So it was with my Faith Garden as well. What had evolved over many years took so little time to evaporate. I was unsure of how or even whether my Framework of Meaning would return. As with my lawn, I was determined not to simply give up on my Faith Garden. I would soon discover a path of new ideas and new surprises to help me on my way.