Perhaps
the counterpoint to my point Tuesday about the need for ‘less talk and
more action’ is the need to embrace complexity and, with it,
uncertainty, including uncertainty about what to do. An editorial
in today’s NYT by a theology professor expresses alarm about the
author’s perception that there is an increasing demand for certainty
and absolutism in our society, and an increasing intolerance not only
for opposing orthodoxy but also for ambiguity, ambivalence, and
compromise.
This inflexibility and lack of resilience is the
sign of a society that is growing increasingly unhealthy and unable to
adapt to changing realities. It manifests itself in nostalgia for
simpler times and a lazy propensity to seek and settle for simple
answers, where there are none, or at least not any that work. It’s
understandable as we grow increasingly impatient at our inability to
bring about urgently-needed change, but doctrinaire thinking tends to
work only for those who want no change – you can win converts for the
status quo, because there’s only one status quo, but the minute you
start to preach one single change prescription for the world’s problems
you face opposition and resistance not only from conservatives but from
other progressives who want to go forward in a different direction.
Complexity precludes achieving broad consensus on What to do. That’s
depressing, because it reduces the probability that we’ll be able to
bring about any meaningful change before our civilization collapses
from its excesses, so it’s something most progressives don’t want to
admit, or even think about.
To address a dilemma in a complex
environment requires a lot of small-scale collective experiments, and
allowing those experiments that succeed to succeed virally (with
'success' meaning sustainability, simplicity, and sufficiency).
It’s a slow process. It may well not work. It may all be too late. But
we can learn a lot from watching animals in the wild solve problems
(like the squirrels conquering the baffles between them and the bird
feeders). They don’t preconceive of one simple certain solution to a
problem. Everything in their lives is tentative, unpredictable,
uncertain, in constant flow. They try a lot of things, starting with
the simplest and moving to more complicated schemes. They learn from
every failure. They hold themselves open to other possibilities. Unlike
us, they never give up. And also unlike us, they usually find something
that works.
Image is from the cover of Bernd Heinrich's Winter World. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
