One aspect of living in a ‘real-time world’ – a world that is unpredictable, overwhelmingly complex, in which we lack control over almost everything and that is changing faster than anyone can comprehend – is the total lack of certainty.
We are waking up to the realization that we don’t have any idea what will happen in the future – nothing is certain. Today, whether you’re talking about the environment, the political situation, or religious extremism many people feel helpless to control the future.
I submit that we are looking at the concept of control (or certainty) in the wrong way. When we think we have control over something we can’t control, it will ultimately control us. If we can accept the idea that nothing is certain, then we may be able to gain clarity, which is different than certainty. Clarity is the ability to ‘see things as they really are’ which is the first step toward acceptance and the opening for a potential new conversation of co-creating a different’ reality’, a different world than the one we are living in at the present.
When we are committed to certainty about the future, we can never get enough information to satisfy us, since the future is always an interpretation which is constantly emerging and being shaped by unknown contingencies and unpredictable circumstances. A quest for absolute certainty can be a vicious cycle in which the more certainty we want the less certain we become.
In the quest for a certain future, some people have resorted to more simplistic, and at times dangerous belief systems that promise to provide people with certainty and control over the future. This partially explains the power of religious or secular cults, and why individuals and organizations can become trapped in a downward spiral of self-destructive behavior.
Today it is clear that we have no certainty. We’ve had another week of the non-stop Trump stories. I’ve half-jokingly distinguished a new syndrome – ‘pundit paralysis’ which is kissing cousin of ‘paralysis by analysis’. Everyone seems to have an opinion and we’ve become trapped and paralyzed by a condition in which everyone’s opinion is the same as everyone else’s. It’s become impossible to find common ground or even a common source of information as a basis for having rational and respectful discourse. This is the real swamp we are in today. The President’s attack on the media, and inflammatory rhetoric about ‘fake news’ continues to undermine the public’s confidence in and access to information that could facilitate moving toward mutual understanding if not resolution of our differences.
On the other hand, if we are committed to clarity and something isn’t clear, we can engage in whatever conversations or learning are needed to ‘clear things up’.
I submit that the question is no longer ‘what will happen’ in the future, but ‘what do we want to happen’, and ‘what are we committed to’?
Our country and our world has never been so divided, so polarized, and so fragmented. Is our commitment to continue to ‘take sides’ and defend a particular point of view or ideology or special interest, or is it to build relationships with others with whom we disagree or perhaps don’t understand with the intention of creating a common future that can work for everyone?
What is clear is that unless we have some common ground from which to have civil and productive conversations and unless we build or rebuild our relationships with each other (and the mutual respect that implies) then the world and our country which we are co-creating anyway will never again be ‘united’ and our vision of a ‘government of the people, for the people and by the people’ will have in fact ‘perished from this earth’.