‘What is now proved was once only imagin’d.’   William Blake

Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty.  Friedrich Nietzsche

Man stands face to face with the irrational.  He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason.  The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.  Albert Camus

“It is absolutely necessary, for progress in science, to have uncertainty as a fundamental part of your inner nature,”  Richard Feynman

“As far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” Albert Einstein

We crave certainty and that gets us into trouble. I had a good friend, a Christian, who liked to quote G.K. Chesterton to me, an atheist: “When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.” My answer was always “But why must we believe in anything? Some things are very likely to be true, others very unlikely to be true. Why not just leave it at that?”

Uncertainty is rising today. We are attacked from all directions by influencers, gaslighters, conspiracy theorists, AI nonsense and quacks of all stripes hawking everything from authoritarian politics to snake oil. Buyer beware and critical thinking are more important than ever yet we are mesmerized by a dopaminergic technology that undermines our defenses. Uncertainty rises and the hucksters crop up to capture the lemmings. As Pogo wisely said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

How do we avoid being caught? By thinking for ourselves and accepting that uncertainty is a fact of life. Philosophers, artists, scientists, psychologists and many ordinary people like you and I have found solace in doing just that. And recognizing the wisdom of the Stoic’s “this too shall pass.”

“The future is now quite uncertain; everyone lives for today, a state of mind in which the game of graft and swindle is played with ease — that is, it is only “for today” that they allow themselves to be bribed and bought, while tomorrow and tomorrow’s virtue they reserve to themselves! It is a well-known fact that individuals, being truly things apart, care more for the moment than their opposites the gregarious do, because they consider themselves as unpredictable as the future; likewise, they readily take up with the violent, because the crowd could neither understand nor condone the actions to which they dare have recourse — but the tyrant or Caesar understands that the individual has a right even to his excesses, and has an interest in advocating a bolder private morality, and even in lending it a hand. For what he thinks of himself, and what he wants others to think of him, is what Napoleon in his classical manner at one time declared: “I have the right to answer any complaint against me with an eternal “this is what I am”. I stand aloof from the whole world and accept conditions from no one. I want submission even to my fancies and regard it as a matter of course that I indulge myself in this or that diversion.” Napoleon once spoke thus to his wife, who had reasons to question her husband’s fidelity.
It is during the most corrupt times that these apples ripen and fall, by which I mean the individuals who bear the seeds of the future, the intellectual pioneers and founders of causes and federations. Corruption is only an ugly word for the autumn of a people.”  Nietzsche, The Gay Science

One hopes that Nietzsche is correct in his eternal recurrence theme idea that “corruption is only an ugly word for the autumn of a people.” The idea that this insanely corrupt time may pass is something I hope is a high probability but as this post indicates, it is not a foregone conclusion.

Absolute certainty is the dystopia of Laplace’s demon, the idea that with enough knowledge we could predict the whole of the future. Such a demon inspires authoritarians and encourages reactionaries of all kinds. It is anti-science, intolerant, inhuman and inhumane. Without uncertainty it’s pointless to make a decision. Without uncertainty possibility itself is not possible. Everything is preordained. As William Blake said in protest: “To God—if you have formed a circle to go into, Go into it yourself and see how you would do.”

Both the need and the ability to make choices is our frontline defense against a takeover by a machine technology that threatens our very existence.

While certainty constricts our freedom, uncertainty impairs our ability to make sense of the world together. It fosters insecurity, anxiety and confusion. Trust declines in government, education, media, medicine and this provides an opportunity for autocratic leaders and populism to grow while democracy fades. A need for certainty promotes quick decision making and a tendency to jump to an all or nothing view of the world. Uncertainty, on the other hand, can lead to analysis paralysis and difficulty in making decisions. If the world is uncertain as chaos theory and the butterfly effect, Gödel incompleteness theorem, quantum mechanics, cybernetics and more and more discoveries seem to indicate then we must find a way to live with that and refrain from our comfortable illusion of absolute truth.

“Today’s huge levels of uncertainty—climate change, inflation, the nigh-impossibility of shared societal goals, the rampant polarization making political moderations very difficult—have truly brought out the very worst in us,” says psychologist Arie Kruglanski whose book Uncertain: How To Turn Your Biggest Fear Into Your Greatest Power is one of the best on this subject. “Yet if uncertainty is a feature of the world, and not just a story about the limits of human knowing, then we’d better find better ways to come to grips with it.”

In What Nietzsche Knows About Donald Trump, Sasha Mudd explains the current situation in America as clearly as I’ve heard it explained: “Trump is not a nihilist in the sense of believing in nothing or cynically holding all values in contempt. Rather, he is an opportunist exploiting a nihilist moment of moral despair and cultural disorientation to install an anti-liberal value system that many millions perceive as a cure for nihilism itself … Trumpism is effective because it taps into deep human needs for belonging, purpose and moral clarity. If liberals are to understand and counter this movement they must recognise they are not fighting amorality—as though the only real values are liberal ones—but an alternative morality that finds meaning in hierarchy, dominance and submission to authority … Long accustomed to unquestioned moral and cultural ascendancy, liberalism must defend itself anew. This requires more than rejecting authoritarianism and defending liberal institutions. We must make a fresh case for why liberal values—freedom, dignity, and equality—are worth preserving.”

One way to “make a fresh case for” liberal values is, strangely enough, by way of mathematics. “Thus one might say that modern mathematics has moved us from Platonism to pluralism. But this pluralism is not an empty relativism, where we agree to disagree and go our separate ways, as if we have nothing to say to each other. Neither is it a nihilistic relativism where we declare that it’s all nonsense anyway, then retreat to our separate bubbles muttering about “alternative facts” and “fake news.” It is more akin to the active, vibrant pluralism of a civil society, where we work to understand each other’s ways of thinking, explore our similarities and differences, and seek common ground. It requires us to respect each other’s views but insists on our right to question them. It admits our ignorance while remaining optimistic that we can learn more. It insists that there is a truth that we can and should pursue together—but that this pursuit is endless, with uncertainty our constant companion.” (See The Uncertainty Principle, Cristopher Moore and John Kaag).

Another way is to encourage people to read great thinkers like those cited at the top of this post: Blake, Nietzsche, Camus, Feynman, Einstein. If you think this is impossible I can assure you from experience that it is not. This blog post was inspired by a discussion with my sixteen year old grandson who asked me about Nietzsche in whom he expressed a genuine interest. It was also inspired by a commencement address at the College of Fine Arts, University of Arizona, Tucson by Andrew Shultz from which my oldest grandson just graduated. Shultz discussed “the benefits of the arts” in America today. Arts and culture account for $1.2 trillion or 4% of GDP and is growing faster than the rest of the economy. Studies show a strong causal effect between the arts and learning (writing, emotional and cognitive thinking). The arts play an important role in promoting good health, combating mental illness, loneliness and isolation, and revealing uncomfortable truths. The arts are thriving in America and they have the potential help “make a fresh case for liberal values.”

Life and truth are beautiful things, though not always easy to understand. We may be trapped in Plato’s cave and YouTube but as long as we are alive we can continue our search, not for absolute certainty but for a better sense of who we are and how we should live.

I’ll end with a few more quotes from Blake, Nietzsche, and Camus.

Blake:  “Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained”  “Opposition is true friendship”. “One Law for the Lion and Ox is oppression”

Nietzsche:  “To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering”.

Camus:  “The world is ugly and cruel but it is only by adding to that ugliness and cruelty that we sin most gravely.”

And finally, one of my favorite Walt Whitman quotes:  “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)