Against Certainty (Bitch, Be Humble)

An essay against the age of certitude in the face of crisis. The world is shifting, and opinions don’t hold much weight.

The backdrop to contemporary daily life is a permanent sense of society adrift, looming catastrophe, and continuous debate. Opinions are everywhere, washing over us disguised as facts, takes hot and cold abound, and every single person seems to feel they have the guiding intent that could steer us in the right direction. The world is drenched in certainty; we’re drowning in it. This usually stops somewhere around naming the potentially biggest problem (as per that person) and making out the enemy. The more inspired will have analytical tools to explain why this is the case, and the most enlightened will offer concrete answers. Strangely, or maybe not so much, these takes and solutions will often cannily resemble the person’s background, education, and life trajectory to an astonishing degree. Who they are as a person will be eerily close to the solutions they have to offer. No one is exempt from this. Thanks to the overflow of information, every single person is convinced of their views and perspectives in the world. But might it not be time to take a step back and embrace the virtue of not-knowing, of uncertainty? Maybe an all-around acceptance of humility would go a long way toward actually resolving many of today’s problems.

With people in the world continuously broadcasting their lives, most industries having been reduced to permanent individualized marketing, and with every aspect of people’s personality and daily routine sold for data harvesting, the impression has been foisted upon us that we live every second of our lives in a dynamic marketplace and battlefield, where media bombards our senses with exactly the information it knows we will react to so that we engage with the various platforms and feed their ad revenue. The result has been that we become caught in loops of purposeful agitation, whether through political or cultural stimulation – with the response levels for negative stimulation having proved much more profitable than any positive ones – our identities feel like they are continuously open to debate, and our personal lives and choices are positioned on some cultural battlefield that needs to be defended. It is not at all helpful that what had been bubbling up on the internet and social media spilled over into the real world some ten years ago. These real-world effects of internet dialogue reinforced the impression that digital dialogue and digital points of view were equivalent to in-person political debate and action. When politicians and citizens begin being assassinated because of topics borne out of online debate, it makes sense to feel urgency when a certain position one has is questioned. Similarly, the effects of online discourse, economics, and behavior have made themselves felt throughout culture. Music and the arts in general are dying an increasingly rapid death because their lifeblood is being sucked out by the digital economy and the pressure it exerts at every level of cultural production. Now, with the rise of AI, this trend is moving into every facet of society as companies look to profit through shedding workforce and replacing whole industries. There is plenty there to make people agitated enough to feel that a random interaction on any given day is life or death, and their very essence as a human being is under attack.

That is how we have found ourselves in this world of permanent debate. We defend our opinions as facts, and emotional states become global realities because we are connected to tools and platforms that make it seem so. There is constant stimulation to argue, because we constantly feel like our worldview is being doubted. The personal-psychological defense mechanism this triggers makes some people a lot of money by driving engagement, for most others, it simply contributes to the cacophony of agitated noise we are all subjected to every day. By constantly feeling the need to take such defensive positions vis-à-vis our reality and to fend off perceived attempts to negate our existence, we have become increasingly unaccustomed to truly questioning ourselves and our reasoning. Healthy self-critical thought has gone out the window. We are certain because we feel that we have to be. There is too much riding on our being right (or wrong) to risk losing face. This ends with our individual realities becoming the only true realities, and our impressions and knee-jerk emotional reactions are facts.

An introductory course in philosophy will quickly teach anyone that people have been pondering the nature of knowledge and what we can truly know (i.e., certainty) for millennia. This is how philosophy, metaphysics, and the sciences have attempted to make sense of our world and universe. What we know, and more importantly, the analysis of our limits, is embedded in our knowledge structures and has defined much of academic discourse until fairly recently. Socrates’ claim that “All I know is that I know nothing” characterizes the driving impulse of nearly all knowledge disciplines and the frameworks they set themselves to work towards the proximity of facts. It is the fundamental understanding that we are limited by our senses, that we often cannot know things with certainty, and that we operate on the best possible results, which serves as the basis upon which we act and hope that it bears fruit. If we quickly pan this over to the current digitally-inflected world of certainties, we can see that any random take or opinion driving social media into a frenzy is sure to have already had dozens, if not hundreds, of research papers published on it. Every year, thousands upon thousands of students around the world write dissertations and theses on any given number of subjects, elaborating or disputing much deeper and more complex ideas surrounding the average topic currently setting everyone’s brains alight. And these ideas will then also be disputed. They all contribute something to the discussion in one form or another and would probably be fairly enlightening for most, but they will usually go completely unnoticed. The most important underlying factor in all of this is the need to develop the ability to admit and accept shortcomings and mistakes. This is the basic structure of knowledge and what is learned in higher education that is most often lost in everyday discourse.

With our current discourse having essentially become about shoring up one’s own identity and quelling one’s doubts, it should also be noted that the foundations of many theories can be seen to be attempts at doing something similar – analyzing and elaborating theories and reasoning that gave their originators the tools they needed to speak to critical insights they themselves had been struggling with. There are classic examples of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who stuttered, formulating theories on speech and language, among others. Or Michel Foucault, who, as a homosexual youth from a well-to-do family, was sent to a psychiatric hospital for a time to rid him of his sexuality, and would later formulate histories of insanity, clinics, and medical perception, as well as sexuality, discipline, and punishment. Similarly, Marx and especially Engels were products of the European Bourgeoisie and were stirred to put their thoughts down when witnessing the conditions they saw upon taking up their first positions after leaving university – most notably, at Engels’ father’s cotton mill in the Mancunian heart of the Industrial Revolution. These are just more recent examples of the basic fact that all thinkers, even or especially the greater ones, are trying to figure out their place in the world.

This is not just limited to philosophy, and before that, theology and metaphysics; their descendants, the sciences, are just as much products of their time, environments, and limitations. Indeed, these limitations, doubts, and debates are precisely the reason science functions as it does. As has been repeatedly pointed out, science is less a body of knowledge that evolves like other fields, but rather a method of inquiry for obtaining measurable answers that can then be tested in the “real world.” The doubts, uncertainties, and questions that underlie the sciences are the very reason there are theories of scientific revolution and development. Whether one subscribes to Karl Popper’s ideas of falsification and critical rationalism or Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms and scientific revolutions, the changes and the expansion in what we see as scientific facts and knowledge, as well as medicine, are driven by uncertainties and those who challenge them to attain new or modified truths. None of what I’ve written is new or especially surprising to anyone who has done even the most cursory of reading on the history or theories of knowledge. What is new, however, is that everyone has access to and is exposed to this epistemological thinking, language, and critical discourse. Only that, instead of a utopian imagining of a body of knowledge being debated and contributed to by a global community of experts and laypeople, these tools are mainly employed to avoid feeling doubts and insecurities relating to one’s own place in the world on any given subject. This instinct is not new or uncommon; just the degree to which people, globally, are certain of their worldview and the surety with which they speak of universal truths. There was a time when people used to grasp and even celebrate their limits and ignorance, saying they were just simple people who didn’t understand “all those big ideas.” Not that their ignorance was any less dangerous, they were just more self-aware. Now everyone knows better. A real understanding of all of our limits and ignorance on any range of subjects will be necessary for our future. Not least to be able to cooperate, defer tasks and expertise, and form alliances and new communities. Only through an understanding of one’s own limitations can we be open to other ways of thinking and be able to develop flexible strategies for taking on the various challenges we will face.

The certitude with which people assert their views has been fatally combined with the start-up mentality of “move fast, break shit” or the rushing of hardware and software to market that are only 80% finished, with the idea that the product and elemental input into the economy (both financial and ideas-based) will be finalized on the back end of the release in a series of patches and updates. These are then ultimately replaced in the foreseeable future by yet another not-quite-ready item. This way of thinking, moving away from a similarly predatory industrial product approach, which nevertheless waited until it was 100% ready and built-to-last, has been combined with a venture capitalist fervor that has deteriorated our structures – politically, economically, and epistemologically – hollowing out meaning across industries and institutions, while selling and profiting off perspectives and sales pitches that pertain to offer certainty. While vibes masquerade as facts, and uncertainty and a vague hope stand in for tangible results, there is also an inherited religious-type morality that criticizes and ostracizes all transgressions, doubt, and anyone who falls out of line. Whether it is a social justice warrior or an alt-right authoritarian, otherness is to be punished. This combination of rushed certainty, grandstanding based on half-remembered factoids, Instagram reels, or foggy recollections of a podcast episode, and virulent defensiveness is why everyone feels isolated and backed into a corner. A foundational question we need to ask ourselves now is if we truly want to improve our condition in whatever form, or would we rather be (or momentarily feel we are in the) “right”?

We finally circle back to the fact that, for all the changes in our world, for all of the rapid developments of the last centuries and particularly the last 100 years, the underlying questions remain the same as they have for thousands of years. The complexity of life, the uncertainty of what we will face, the doubts we have to live with as we age and endure setbacks and tragedy, all force us to make peace with our limitations as humans. It is no coincidence that traditions such as Buddhism or Daoism, both multiple millennia old, revolve around precisely these concepts. The ambiguity of reality, the painful decisions one is sometimes forced to make, as well as the sadness and joy inherent to being alive, all negate certainty and have been what defines human life since the very beginning. Everything can and cannot be all things at all times. Leading a truly happy life is hard; having a family is hard; loving somebody is hard; moving beyond pain is hard; admitting mistakes and errors is hard; at the same time, there are moments where all of these things, not to mention real love and happiness, can feel like they come naturally. Joy can hit us in surprise moments, completely unprepared. Where does certainty exist there? The only certainty we can really know is that we are all going to die, as is everyone we know or have ever met. Giving into uncertainty, giving into our ignorance, admitting our limitations, allows us to grow. There are even seemingly antagonistic and ambitious examples that speak to this. A military general aware of their army’s weaknesses as compared to those of their opponents can, through knowing and proactively integrating this into their strategy, fight a battle or indeed an entire war in such a way that they will be victorious. A team that is aware of its shortcomings can develop a style of play through which it can beat stronger teams, and that will even allow it to win titles. There are plenty of examples where knowing that you don’t know, what you are not able to do, knowing your limitations, and knowing how to admit and even work with those, and in concert with others, allows you and others to achieve much higher goals than would be possible if you simply played to what would be considered your strengths.

In a time of maximum confusion, fear, and anxiety, everyone outwardly postures as if they have the clearest view of reality. At the same time, the panic that underlies politics around the world communicates that nobody really feels they have a grasp on what is going on. More honesty, more self-doubt, more openness to critical analysis of one’s own views and not simply those questioning ideas adjacent to your held beliefs, could soften dialogue to a point where concessions and cooperation would be thinkable. The orthodoxies of old, whether religious or political, are stale and dying. An admission of ignorance and humility would be a first step to readying ourselves for the future. Deferring to those who could offer insight, epistemologies that widen and/or deepen our perspectives, allow for growth. Being at the dead-end we now are requires this of us. In the same way that life requires it of every one of us as we age and are increasingly confronted with the limitations life places on us. Embracing uncertainty, embracing our weaknesses, allows for growth and the ability to accrue wisdom, not necessarily to optimize and emerge victorious (remember, the finish line is death), but to navigate the hand we are dealt and survive with dignity. One lesson of life on earth is that it is transient; just look at any of the mass extinctions. We know we are heading into unstable times, whether in the short term or long term, whether we are talking about liberal democracy or climate crisis, the rise of authoritarianism and soft fascism, or the collapse of various systems integral to sustaining human life on the scale it has been sustained thus far. On an individual level, it usually takes tragedy for us to be taken down a notch – the scale that would be on to do the same to us on a civilizational level is daunting but not uncommon. Dropping the circus of certainty that we have been performing these last 10-odd years would do us well. There will be no gotcha moment or “told you so” when living in the ruins of what once was.