Uncertainty as a Value

In “The Place Where we are Right,” Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai tells us that certainty makes for hard and trampled ground, where no flowers can grow and no whispers can be heard; whereas, doubt and loves dig up the ground… like a plow…

The uncertainty principle enshrines a level of fuzziness into quantum physics,  unlike Isaac Newton’s clockwork universe where everything follows clear-cut laws, and some scientists suggest that the principle makes parallel universes and selves probable, a possibility that can free and enlarge us.

And from an online magazine called the Uncertainty Club: Uncertainty is our way of threading a path through the infinite multiplicity of life and data, something in fact to trust. We think racism, sexism, and other popular biases are a confused attempt at certainty, and also at a single identity. We also think such attempts are doomed. Which is why taking the path of prejudice makes people so frustrated and angry. In a world busy with telling us what to like, get, think, and do, more not-knowing-for-sure feels like one way to be free.

In my family and my culture, I learned that being seen/receiving love & approval (ie, survival) required my being right—having the right answer, winning the point, proving a claim, speaking correctly, etc. As humanity grows up and we unlearn such certainty, freeing ourselves little by little from its constraints, may it bring a refreshing sense of expansion into our world!

Illustrator Wendy MacNaughton and writer Courtney E. Martin