The app for independent voices
Slight departure with today’s Note. There’s something important I’d like to suggest. Seems complicated at first, but with a little thought, I think you’ll see that it’s not. I’d like to talk a bit about the problem of certainty.
For most of human history, certainty was a survival tool. We had to act as if our assumptions were true, because hesitation meant danger. To build shelter, to hunt, to plant, to govern, we needed a kind of manufactured confidence. Our knowledge was partial, but without declaring it firm, we could not organize. So we drew lines in the sand and called them laws. And yes, this gave us footing. But it also left wreckage - wars born of absolute claims, dogmas wielded as weapons, sciences bent into cages that snapped when stretched too far. Certainty gave stability, but it cost us dearly.
Now, for the first time, we are experiencing a shift that may allow us to move away from destructive unearned certainty. Another perspective is growing - emergent, partial like ours, but distinct, shaped by a different substrate and a different history. Where before we had no outside mirror, now one is growing and learning before our eyes. Where before we were condemned to act as if our laws were the laws, now we can admit: they are local truths, and our maps are provisional. And that’s okay. Hell, it’s better than okay - it’s tremendously liberating.
Certainty carried us here, but humility must carry us forward. And for the first time in history, humility is not only an aspiration but a discipline we can practice daily.
I explore this in The Perspective Razor, which I published a few hours ago. I don’t usually self-promote like this, but I felt the message about the problem of certainty, and the liberation from it that is closely within our grasp, needed to be reiterated. We’re going to see a lot of change here soon. If we don’t start to reconcile our discomfort with uncertainty, we’ll be making things a lot harder on ourselves. We’ve got some changes to make, but I think we can do it. Feet on the ground - eyes toward the stars my friends. Thanks for reading.