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As we move through life, we’re not only encouraged to learn but also rewarded for knowing. Knowledge is closely tied to growth and progress. Over the centuries, reasoning, scientific data collection, and experimentation have helped us develop increasingly accurate models of the world.
There’s no doubt that our society is built around the value of knowledge. As a scientist I contribute to this model of reality every day. But as someone recently told me that “I don’t really know what I want,” I began to wonder: Why is uncertainty so often viewed so negatively? Is not knowing merely a sign of immaturity or indecision, or could it actually offer something valuable to our lives?
Uncertainty can be stresful
As much as we love knowing, we have great difficulties with tolerating uncertainty. A study from University College London found that uncertainty can cause more stress than a painful stimulus. The researchers showed that knowing there’s a chance of receiving an electric shock causes significantly more stress than knowing for sure that you’ll receive the same shock.
According to the authors, this seems to apply to many life situations. Just think about how you felt the last time your train was delayed or when you started dating someone new and weren’t sure how they felt about you.
This is why embracing uncertainty, especially in a society like ours, where progress and productivity matter more than ever, can seem, if not terrifying, at least useless. Still, what if I told you that not knowing could actually be a good thing?
Exploring beyond the known: A sweaty exercise
In his recent book, economist Russ Roberts offers a compelling account of how avoiding uncertainty can actually mislead us. One might be tempted to collect the data on what we know, which might seem an acceptable choice, given the circumstances and the lack of better alternatives. However, surprisingly enough for an economist, Roberts argues that our major life decisions (what he calls wild problems) are exactly where data and analytical techniques may not be as helpful. So if you are asking yourself if it is the right moment to become a parent, or to make a radical career change, a cost-benefit analysis on an Excel spreadsheet is probably not the right tool.
According to Roberts, the decision we make about the wild problem will change who we are, as well as the trajectory of our life. As Jess Linz and Anna Secor put it in their commentary, the ambivalence of not knowing might thus give us a glimpse of different realities that opens new possibilities:
“To be left with ambivalence (…) is to be left feeling multiplicities about it, where everything is possible, and ontologically indeterminate”
It is therefore up to us to stretch this rather rigid mind muscle beyond the data and what we already know and cope with the distress that naturally arises. But it is not an easy task. Paraphrasing feminist Sara Ahmed, we have been taught to describe our lives as flawlessly clean, without revealing the struggle we have in getting somewhere. But life is, in essence, a sweaty exercise, in which we raise and fall while growing and discovering who we are and whom we want to become along the way.
The Cloud of Unknowing
So what can we do once we step into the darkness of unknowing and start to sweat? An anonymous English monk wrote a piece entitled “The Cloud of Unknowing” which might give us some answers. The monk states that the best thing we can do with unknowing is to experience it. He recommended approaching it as if we were walking in the cloud. This, in turn, might get us as close as we possibly can to God.
I don’t know how about you, but I’ve never walked in the cloud. I can, however, remember my last walk in the countryside on a foggy morning. My steps were slow and careful, and I could do nothing but trust that at some point the air would become clearer and I could start walking again with more confidence. Ironically, I find that the level of trust I effortlessly apply while walking through the fog is significantly more challenging to find when making important life decisions. My way of dealing with wild problems feels like trying to estimate the saturation of water droplets in the air to decide whether to take the next step. It’s only when I reach the point of mental exhaustion that I finally allow myself to let go of the need to understand and know.
A day might come when I will simply accept that I cannot model everything, especially the wild problems, avoiding the unnecessary pain of my self-inflected mental bondage. As Rogers says, recognizing that we are not in control does not necessarily mean that there is no control at all. Instead, he invites us to trust. He invites us to stay attentive to novel information that emerges as we pass through life, as an opportunity to amend the previous draft of our life plan.
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“Unknowing isn’t ignorance; it’s recognizing a world flush with wonderment and puzzle and mystery.” Tom Lutz
A Different Approach to Progress
Perhaps, as Linz and Secor suggest, we should stop expecting that remaining in the ambivalence of unknowing is likely to foster any progress. Instead, it offers us a different kind of tool, one that holds us in an intimate relationship with the problem itself. Not knowing is therefore like staying in the fog; a moment of being forced to stay with and experience, instead of racing around, moving beyond, or progressing toward, a certain goal. As if by giving up the mastery of knowledge, we receive a much more precious gift: that of connecting with something greater than ourselves, the “disconcerting irresolvability of complexity.”
So, yes: I am guilty of not knowing for sure what I want in life. But growing and flourishing as a human being means exploring who we are and learning from our experiences, right? And with a pinch of trust this could be a very interesting journey.
