Countering the despair of uncertainty
I’ve begun Stuart Kauffman’s latest book, which will be a little heavy summer reading, and he states his purpose very clearly in the preface:
“If no natural law suffices to describe the evolution of the biosphere, of technological evolution, of human history, what replaces it? In its place is a wondrous radical creativity without a supernatural Creator. Look out your window at the life teeming about you. All that has been going on is that the sun has been shining on the earth for some 5 billion years. Life is about 3.8 billion years old. The vast tangled bank of life, as Darwin phrased it, arose all on its own. This web of life, the most complex system we know of in the universe, breaks no law of physics, yet is partially lawless, ceaselessly creative. So, too, are human history and human lives. This creativity is stunning, awesome, and worthy of reverence. One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures. Because of this ceaseless creativity, we typically do not and cannot know what will happen. We live our lives forward, as Kierkegaard said. We live as if we knew, as Nietzsche said. We live our lives forward into mystery, and do so with faith and courage, for that is the mandate of life itself. But the fact that we must live our lives forward into a ceaseless creativity that we cannot fully understand means that reason alone is an insufficient guide to living our lives. Reason, the center of the Enlightenment, is but one of the evolved, fully human means we use to live our lives. Reason itself has finally led us to see the inadequacy of reason. We must therefore reunite our full humanity. We must see ourselves whole, living in a creative world we can never fully know.” (from “Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion” by Stuart A. Kauffman)
For most of my carreer I have worked with complex systems. I am not an engineer or a planner. I have taken to calling myself a strategist and a host of strategic conversations. In other words, I use dialogue to help people with processes to make sense of the emergent complexity that they are dealing with. Enough sense that they can make decisions about what to do next.
The problem with complex problems though is this unknowability and unpredictability. This can create a kind of cognitive stress. We like to be in control, and to know what we are doing. Our image of competence is founded not only on our ability to take action in the present but to know what to do in the near future. The truth is of course that we cannot know what to do because the future is possibly surprising on a level of novelty that challenges everything we know. That seems to have been the lesson of 2016, anyway: we never really saw it coming.
Living with this uncertainty can elicit a kind of existential crises, and I speak from experience. One can become depressed and hopeless and despairing that one’s contributions are meaningless. I’m working through those feeling now in my own life and work (and not in any way fishing for validation). It is partly down to having inherited an excellent grounding in a rational world view that I find myself struggling for Kauffman’s imperative: that we must see ourselves whole, living in a creative world that we can never fully know.
I’m curious how many of you struggle with that, and realize that when the scales fall from your eyes, your attachment to reason becomes inadequate to face what life and work is handing to you. Our desire to be in control and competent blocks the surrender we need to fully enter into the promise of this creative and unfolding world. I’m working through it, but the promise of an emerging and ever creating world is a hard one to appreciate when my own mind desires a lock on certainty. How’s it go for you?
Yes.
Enjoying and living in wonder into “the ceaseless creativity” of our experience–some may have this gift naturally but for many of us, including me, it lies across a chasm of semi-paralyzing fear, and existential despair. There are a lot of koans at the edge of the gap–reason is insufficient and at the same time indispensable; we can’t “let go’ because our deeply fixed sense of ourselves–the one who is letting go–is part of what needs to be let go of; etc.
Fortunately, there is a world that mediates between reason and complete openness–the world of symbols , which evoke real but non-conceptual experience of the creative openness. You see this in the religious imagery and ritual of Tibetan Buddhism, for example (and undoubtedly in other contemplative religious traditions), as well as in art and in craft
Thank you for this piece Chris,
I particularly resonate with the living in a world that we can never fully know, as I am an over-rational, uber-scientific on what may be a journey of (i don’t want to say recovery) evolving from that to a more integrated view. Plus, I am currently on an intellectual binge of theories, reading, etc (you may have heard of that) and at the same time I am questioning: why is it needed? to what extent is it needed? Can I ease into not knowing, or say into admitting that this will always be a work in progress?
Hi Chris, as a ”recovering physicist’ I think I’ve had to come quite a long way on this one! Yes, complexity demands that we engage with (and are part of) systems we can never truly know, and can’t escape from. I have been developing ideas around what the Japanese might call ‘rutenso’ – the art of working with constant change. Most management and organisational ideas are premised on the opposite, so it’s a fascinating, frustrating and worthwhile journey to work on building responsiveness, awareness and at the same time confidence (that we can handle stuff, even if we don’t know what it is yet). This connects strongly to improvisational skills in my view – theatre, musical, whatever. The role of leaders in emerging complex worlds cannot therefore be to ‘know the answer’, but rather to engage people in working together on the issues.
I absolutely recognise and resonate with what you are all saying and appreciate the clarity with which you articulate the complex and paradoxical conundrum of life. Learning to improvise through the clown archetype has helped me enormously. Improvisation generally we know supports capacity to be in moment to moment uncertainty and the Clown or the fool connects us to our wholeness (our messy humanity). Play is the doorway to this practice and i believe is important to now in many ways not least because we can be self compassionate and self aware within it – being present and relaxed are integral to it and it’s fun. Of course, purposeful play is also paradoxical.
I love the way play and improvisation is coming into this discussion. It is something that has fallen away from my own practice recently.
Play can certainly transform despair whilst leaving room for it to be there and acknowledged too.
I shared your Stuart Kaufman quote with Gwen Gordon who runs an online play group that I am part of. She writes eloquently and intelligently about play and the importance of play – you can have a look at her stuff here https://gwengordonplay.com.
The idea of Purposeful Play came to me 8 years ago when Ireland was in the depths of recession. Most of my work as an OD consultant was in the public service – mainly healthcare at that time, and we were finding that everything was so contracted that creativity – even relatively simple or individual acts – was made almost impossible within the system. The idea of play as valuable, in an Irish workplace at least (bar the Googles of this world) really didn’t stick but post Brexit and Trump I sense there is more openness to it generally. To play we mostly need to move so this has brought me into the territory of embodiment more and more every day – something I really value and am learning a huge amount.
I read a quote recently that I wish I could find right now. It said something along the lines of ‘our true purpose in life is to evolve.’ It sounds simple, but it really made me think. Like you, Chris, and many others, I have struggled with uncomfortableness off uncertainty or that heavy burden of the question…why am I here, what is my purpose? And I find that the uncertainty of it causes so much stress and anxiety which can lead to depression and despair. But after I read this quote, it opened my eyes and relieved some pressure for me. What if the only reason we are here is to evolve. Just like the birds I watch from my back patio. They are here simply to live and evolve. Well then, the pressure is off! If I can live in the present, and know in my soul that I’m doing all I can to evolve myself and become the best version of myself, without worrying about the end result, then aren’t I living out my purpose? I think so. I don’t have to be certain about anything…except that I’m trying.
Through my studies of Montessori, I have learned of the head, heart, hand connection. These three things must always be present in our lives, and we must spend our lives balancing them. I believe this IS our evolution…our purpose. As humans, our minds have a bad habit of taking over…at least mine does. We must focus ourselves on more heart and more work with our hands and less time with our heads. When we can find a way to balance all three, we will then be in flow and find our true cosmic task.
Thanks Tania for sharing that – it has ease built in