Desire for Certainty

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”  ― Francis Bacon, The Advancement Of Learning

Human beings long certainty. A young man wants the certainty of a college degree and a great job and an old man the certainty of health and pension (or whatever social security there may be). Business wants the certainty of buyers, suppliers, infrastructure, finance and so on. Imagine if every day the route to work were different or if the bank kept moving its neighborhood ATM every month!! The wealth and advancement of mankind has been through understanding the nature and cause of uncertainty and giving it greater certainty. But the critical aspect driving advancement has always been the intensity of search for uncertainty and the motivation to give it certainty. It is a conundrum – more certain you are, less the motivation.

The uncertainty of food resulted in early man undertaking huge migration routes. The need for subsistence and preponderance of an agricultural economy continued to drive human endeavor for thousands of years from innovating at war to Europeans finding a route to India for spices. The pace of change till the middle ages was even and incremental.

But then came the European age. Since the Roman times, the area at edge of Europe (then called Promontorium Sacrum) in Portugal was prohibited for people as they thought the demons of the Atlantic would take them. These demons began to be banished when Henry the Navigator built a school for explorers of the Atlantic where Vasco de Gama, Magellen and Columbus went and thus began the European centuries. The European exploration of the globe resulted in 2 critical changes:   

1. By bringing various geographies into their fold they not only interconnected the globe but also unified them in a European thinking, especially the elite (and the invention of the printing press helped);
2. Extraordinary wealth and motivation (money and political power) that came with the new explorations propelled Europe in the fields of art, philosophy, political thought, natural / social / applied sciences etc.     

Martin Luther said at the Diet of Worms, "Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen." The initiation of this thought changed the way European mindset replaced and challenged the teachings of the Church. Again Hobbes, like Locke, stated that true revelation can never be in disagreement with human reason and experience. Luther, Hobbes, Locke, Bacon, Descartes and many of their contemporaries drove Europeans to reason and scientific discovery but fundamental underlying belief was “world is predictable and laws of nature can be deciphered”.

Just go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discoveries, it lists the major scientific discoveries since 3^rd Century BC, the pace of discovery from the 17^th century onwards is breathtaking. A simple aspect like home water and sanitation we see today provides certainty of using it at a time one likes; it is regarded as the most productivity enhancing change ever.

On the political front, from the Napoleonic Wars, when the French sought to rule Europe and in turn the world, Europe has always sought political certainty. The Congress of Vienna convened in 1814, the League of Nations in 1920 post World War I, and United Nations in 1945 post World War II and then the European Union in 1993 have all been institutions in this direction. In the two world wars it is estimated over 100m lives were lost, mostly European. This is in addition to a similar number estimated to have been lost in the 3-4 centuries before that in global conquests. In parallel, advent of democracy and the social revolutions (i.e. French Revolution) made governments increasingly responsible for their citizen’s well-being.

In an endeavor to improve the lives of their citizens and to protect their lives, the West sought greater and greater certainty on daily and political life. While science gave them greater control over their lives, wealth gave them greater comforts, politics was fickle and intermittent but its desire was only growing. This acute need for certainty is Europe’s gift to the world.

One can witness the global horror, as Yugoslavia in the 1990s tore itself or the Ukranian issue now as if there borders have never moved. When house prices in the US which continued to climb till 2008 until it could no longer keep going, everywhere across the globe individuals and institutions bet on the certainty of this and the world is still recovering from the imbalance. 

We know and understand more than we ever have and with it our inherent desire to ‘receive in the band’ of certainty has only gone up. Only look at how we gasp to situations that only a century ago we would have taken in our stride…

“Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” ― Tony Schwartz