Today, I’m writing to seek your support. As we hunker down in these last few hours of the year, it’s almost impossible not to reflect on the year nearly past and the one creeping up on us. What are our intentions for this brand new, yet-to-be-tainted year? Sure, I need to exercise more—a lot more—and I absolutely must better understand how to manage adolescents. I need to call my mother more often and also keep the laundry pile from becoming a rival to the North Cascades.
But, I also feel called to start a movement—or maybe join one—a movement to undermine a tic in public discourse that is threatening our ability to solve almost any collective problem, that is corrosive to the very heart of a deliberative democratic nation. That tic—or habit of mind or rhetorical rut—is our national compulsion to present everything with such certainty. Anytime we make an argument—myself included—we spell it out definitively with no air holes, no rise of voice at the end of the sentence that might even vaguely suggest a question mark, no possibility that what we are saying is anything other than an absolute truth that should be obvious to any one over the age of reason.
This commitment to certainty leaves no room for experimentation, for failure, for innovation. If it is obvious that you must agree with me or be pronounced a dolt, there can be no spirit of let’s try this and see if it works. Let’s give it a whirl. Let’s make time for adjustments. Let’s mix a little of that and a little of this and maybe we can make the whole enterprise better.
Nope, it’s just: 1) We must raise taxes on the 1% that are living off the fat of the land tilled by the rest of us or 2) We must wean ourselves from the nanny-state that is undermining entrepreneurship and killing the American dream. We choose and present our positions with such moral force and certainty that any other arguments are to be met with scorn and then with outrage.
I for one am tired of the sound of my own indignation. I am certain we need additional gun control in this country. Absolutely certain of it, but I also wonder if there is just a tiny space to also talk about increased law enforcement and flexibility to make people feel safe in their own homes and their own communities. I am sure in the end I will have a position—probably one very close to the one I have now—but I would like to reach that position after listening to a range of options and honestly weighing the arguments. I would like to come to my position humbly and without disdain for other frightened and well-intentioned parents who are looking to keep their children safe in schools and malls.
Plus, it will be fun. We—the foot soldiers against certainty—can tell each other our secrets. We can confess that we don’t really know what to do about climate change or the national debt or tax reform. We can swap recipes for raising kids in an uncertain world. We can spin out wild ideas over bottles of wine and imagine an America that is so much more creative and vibrant than the one we live in now. We can laugh at our own mistakes and crack jokes about our foibles. We can come out of the bunkers marked with the team colors of our political brands and shake our heads together over a crazy experiment that just might work.
Doesn’t that sound like a movement worth joining? I’m just certain it is.
Wendy, I read this post when I got up this morning so I’ve had seven waking hours to ponder your request. I’ll start by saying “I’m in”. Sure I live across the border, and this year, half way around the world, but this conversation is too important to let the 49th parallel, 3 or 9 hours time difference, and the Atlantic Ocean (at least until July 2013) get in the way.
I’ve got some domestic work to do before I can join in. The first task is to figure out how to keep the kitchen table cleared off enough so good conversations can take place without us having to stand up to see each other across the piles of stuff on the table.
When we first met you showed me your office at City Club with your desk/formica kitchen table and said “many good things start at the kitchen”. Ain’t it the truth! We too battle with laundry to the point where I think dressers and closets are superfluous and that my family should just surrender and live, week to week, out of the clean laundry basket. But if we’re going to join in your conversation we need to find a way to handle the multiple land uses that have staked their claim in the highest value piece of real estate in our house: the kitchen table. We eat there, I write there, the kids do homework there, we play games, we make stuff and it’s a flat surface so it attracts objects. So while I’m listening, learning and engaging in your movement, the other side of my brain is going to design the mother-of-all-kitchen-table organizers.
While going about my daily business on this holiday day in the South of France I’ve been thinking a lot about what you wrote about certainty. One of the things I do at work and at home is try really hard to find new ways to respond to uncertainty. For the longest time my coping strategy was to plan for the worst. I’d think through all the terrible things that could happen, figure out what I’d do, and then I’d feel better. But when I met Chris (my now husband) he challenged me by suggesting I was wasting time and energy worrying about things that might never happen. Good point!
When talking to my kids and/working with our urban planning students I try really hard to frame uncertainty in a way that normalizes our expectations of its arrival. In this complex and emergent world we need to find ways to deal with uncertainty because while we might not be able to see its form with acuity, we should just expect that unexpected things will happen. We need to be nimble and agile, not entrenched and wishing to go back to a time that no longer exists.
One option is to hunker down in fortress world with our batteries, bottled water and canned beans. It’s good to be prepared but our thriving democracy isn’t going to emerge from us exchanging ideas on our walkie talkies in our basement bunkers.
Perhaps in the face of uncertainty we could all also think about “what can I bring to the table?”. When the unexpected happens we’re all better off, I think, if we can figure out what skills/ideas/stuff we have that we can share to make sure more people are looked after and watched out for.
For a long time I’ve been trying to find a metaphor or an image that captures how I hope to think about and respond to uncertainty. The image of the diesel powered generator is a good idea but it doesn’t give me hope or inspiration. This morning watching the sun rise, walking our ridiculous dog, and thinking over your post I figured it out: it’s a surf-board! As the waves of uncertainty pound the shores of our homes, communities and cities, I want to be on top of it, riding its ups and downs, headed for shore so I can turn around, paddle back out and give it another go. I’m gonna get one that’s big so if someone else needs a lift they can hop onboard.
Thanks for getting us going! I must note, however, you forgot to sell your movement with one of your many assets: there will be pie and it will be delicious.
Pamela – wow, what a thoughtful response! I love your metaphor of adaptability and power. And, that’s what I want for my kids, too. But, it’s hard because it is so tempting to reassure them with promises of things I can’t really promise (“Of course you are safe at school,” etc.). But, Chris is right, huh, that we can’t waste energy fretting–or at least too much energy? And yes, yes, the revolution requires pie! xoxo
there was a book that moved me when i was a teen, back when i took things that moved me quite seriously, and the impression has lingered: alan watt’s “the wisdom of insecurity.” i’ve bought copies and given them away and bought them again only to give them away again, so i don’t have one presently and thus can’t quote directly. relevant to your blog post would be his concept of “reversed effort,” how through our quests for psychological security, intellectual and spiritual certainty, we actual undermine what we seek. although we seek order through knowing–through an attachment to certainty, as it were–in doing so not only do we become less secure, but we exchange our capacity for joy and liveliness. the subtitle of the book (written back in the 70s, i believe) is :message for an age of anxiety. there world feels increasingly chaotic to me, as human relations to space, time, and each other rapidly morph and feel less intelligible. perhaps the increasing fundamentalism worldwide is a response to anxiety over this uncertainty. i dunno. but i see your point and am down for a little more uncertainty in 2013. thanks for the reminder.