Mankind fills the empty space of uncertainty with something concrete—whether this is something rational and useful or something chaotic, at least it’s something known. To cope with life’s inherent uncertainties, individuals and societies develop various patterns of behavior, such as rules of law and moral codes, intended to reduce the impact of the unknown on our lives.
Legal and moral systems were originally intended to apply equally across society. And in a society experienced by its members as just and equitable, with concern for the common man, uncertainty produces less anxiety and disruption than in a society seen as caring more for the wealthy and influential.
Unfortunately, when some individuals realized they could gain advantage over others, inequality was introduced. Inequality acts to increase uncertainty and its ramifications. Uncertainty can then engender fear—another strong behavioral motivator.
When people feel unsafe, their instinctive response is to try to control their environment somehow. Conservatives alarmed by the sixties’ unregulated, messy people-power said “Never again!” Then 9/11 sent the message that nobody is safe, not even the rich and powerful. Were the ensuing seven years of profligate financial manipulation an overreaching attempt by that social class to regain societal control—inadvertently producing the worldwide economic disasters of 2008?
Fear is too often followed by exploitation and/or overreach. History has seen how overreach always leads to “pushback” of some kind, no matter the source of the overreach. We all drink from this poisoned well and, if history is our teacher, a day of reckoning is inevitable.
Why is the unknown so threatening, perceived as a “nothing” that must be replaced with something, even a destructive something? Humans seem to have an inherent propensity to fill uncertainty with negative predictions. But negative predictions are often more a function of anxiety than of actual evidence. “If this, then that” is pulled out of thin air, though it may not be borne out by present or even historical reality.
Think about your own tendency to fill the unknown with potential danger. Danger is always possible, but possibility is not fact. A prediction is merely a prediction, and a possibility is not necessarily a probability. Anxiety does not make things so.
Because anxiety is anticipatory dread, it always writes a bad story. Whenever it feels like something to dread is just around the corner, we need to find a different way to fill in the blanks. As it turns out, it can be calming to examine our negative predictions and look for hard evidence to support or contradict them.
As we often feel we can do little about what happens in the world at large, we are left to do what we can in a smaller way: to take care of our personal worlds and the workings of our minds. To accept that being uneasy with uncertainty is a human challenge is realistic. To pay attention to our responses, and try to keep in mind that uncertainty is not automatically a bad thing, is wise. The way of love can be a useful antidote to uncertainty because it adds trust and predictability to our personal relationships.
Barbara & Oliver