An Insane Human World Article 2

The immense forces of normalcy bias and social inertia have led millions of people not understanding the mathematical certainty of an appending collapse. In the meantime, a more realistic perception of the world forces one to ultimately have to believe in social justice. What is more, by doing so, we see that social justice is something that all too often the powerful 'elites' cannot, because of their very nature, ever provide. Again, how many political parties are run by and on behalf of the elite, and how do you even begin to challenge the status quo? Especially when so many are more interested in buying what they don’t need and are being distracted by all the rubbish feed to us via much of the media.

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Sadly, what is valued in all too many societies throughout the world for such a long time now, as well as within all too many human organisations, is the concept of certainty, whereas what is undervalued is the concept of uncertainty, again, the notion that we live on a predictable and certain world could be said to be somewhat illusory, in that in reality we really live in a social and organisational manmade world that is inherently unpredictable.

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Meanwhile, throughout recorded history many, even well- meaning people from across the social, political and organisational arena, are very much inclined, especially when seeing their familiar world crumbling and the environment becoming more unpredictable, you usually find they begin to develop an increasing hunger for certainty, order, structure, and predictability. This demand for certainty, order, structure, and predictability (and often demanded by the already powerful who see the unsure as weak) is based on a number of delusions, the first being the myth of centralised efficiency, especially authoritarian efficiency that in reality does not deal very effectively with real life issues, or with the unpredictable nature of human existence.

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The question is: “Is what we know all there is to know?” Much of the world is influenced and controlled by those who are positive about things they really know little about. Self-proclaimed 'experts', politicians, heads of public and private organisations, economists, media pundits, celebrities etc., who apart from been given undeserved reverence, keep on gabbling not knowing about, or listening, to the genuine concerns of people, many of whom are struggling to survive in their everyday lives.

 

If we were to acknowledge that what we think we know is not all there is to know, then surely the world would be a more interesting, saner and a much safer place in which to live. Nevertheless, in social and organisational life, and especially in politics, an admission of uncertainty is somehow seen as problematic. To take an example, if someone, say in the political sphere, was asked a question to which they had no answer the likely response is either to attempt to ignore the question, respond with a question, or say: “I'll answer that shortly” hoping the question will be forgotten by the end of the meeting, press conference etc., Whereas, if the response was simply to say: "I don't know about that; however I will go away and find out," which is the right thing to do.  Sadly, all too often the reaction from those asking the questions would likely be: "We got them there!"

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This relentless pursuit of point-scoring, this obsession with certainty, is a form of madness, it is irrational and it is dangerous and often destructive. Look where it all too often leads. It was in relation to the Iraq war that George W Bush said that if America "shows uncertainty and weakness...the world will drift towards tragedy. This will not happen on my watch." Well, in many ways it did just that. In his book: “The Black Swan” Nassim Taleb argues that the idea that the economic models used by the banks are often based on the dubious idea of stability and predictability. Meanwhile, those who most understand the value of uncertainty are scientists themselves, certainly those working in the fields of quantum physics, climate crisis etc., rightly tell us how little we know about the world that surrounds and sustained us.

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It is certainly refreshing to listen to highly thoughtful people talk about the limits of their own knowledge. As opposed to all the lazy and often misleading and dangerous leaders found in all too many areas of cultural, social, business and political organisations who keep telling us that they alone have the only true answers to how life ought to be lived. Again, as someone once said: The big divides are not between different beliefs, but the differing degree of certitude in which those beliefs are held.” No one, no group, knows everything there is to know about the world. Therefore, no one, no group, has all the answers to human existence, nor the Living Earth. However, together we might find deeper understandings of the true reality of existence.

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