What we need more than shouting our answers out loud is a quiet confidence in not knowing. We need better questions and most critically a practiced tolerance for allowing the new to arise from the old.
From the perspective of neuro-science, not knowing is an intentional choice to inhibit the part of the brain wired for certainty, predictability and control. Not knowing doesn’t mean we ignore what we know. It means we hold what we know lightly so something new can emerge. We listen to voices other than our own, seek to understand the system we are part of, and bring to light underlying assumptions limiting our thinking.
When addressing the value of uncertainty, I like to reference the concept of “negative capability,” a term initially articulated by the poet John Keats in 1817. He described it as the capacity of being in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Organizational theorists were drawn to its implications for leadership. They observed how leaders, when encountering situations of great ambiguity, moved into defensive behaviors that only made things worse. And they noticed three specific defensive postures.
The first was to become overwhelmed, reflected in behaviors such as avoidance, postponement, or the inability to come to a decision — not because of the uncertainties but because they were in a state of fear or overload. The second defensive behavior was hyper-intellectualization; going into an explanatory mode that sounded good but resolved nothing and often was associated with becoming emotionally unavailable. The third defense– maybe the most common of all – was moving directly into action without thoughtfulness or consideration of consequences.
The linguistic root of the word “capability” is associated with holding or containing. I just bought pots for bamboo and was told to buy ones with thicker walls because bamboo can crack through the thinner pots. In the same way, our emotional and conceptual containers need to be strong enough to hold discomfort and large enough to cultivate new ideas. By negative, Keats was not referring to pessimism or destructive thoughts but the rare ability to be empty of pre-conceived solutions. By naming this ability a strength, he was shining a light on a leadership skill necessary for encountering volatility, ambiguity, and complexity – a skill we need now more than ever.
I greatly value all your ongoing efforts to merge contemporary and classical ideas into evolving syntheses that spare us from having to invent wisdom and leadership from zero, but I continue to feel, to my regret, that most leaders with positional authority couldn’t care less about the kinds of leadership wisdom that you and colleagues are so bravely trying to cultivate. With mega-billions of dollars at play in corporate and government decisions, the virtuous leadership we’d all like to see is the first thing that gets mocked, devalued, excluded, and subverted. Institutional hierarchies, whether corporate or governmental, are highly selective precisely for sociopathic “leaders” who perpetuate inhuman institutional values and practices, while posing with leaderly personas that superficially humanize their institutional host. I think we are long past the time when individual leaders, or benevolent groups, can counteract the almost inherent inhumanity of institution-scale strategies and priorities. As Langdon Winner pointed out in Autonomous Technology (and Jacques Ellul before him), technological agencies — particularly capitalist forms — of government, professions, and corporations have usurped human agency and have taken on a life of their own, not unlike the Borg who assimilate humans and other species into their automatized depradations. A quick scan of global issues and agents makes me despair that “wise leadership” has, or will have in my lifetime, anything approaching the capability to counteract the massively prevailing forces of institutionalized sociopathy and societal ignorance that currently rule the planet. I don’t say this to discourage your efforts in any way, but perhaps to compare our current situation to the Titanic, where, at a certain point in its voyage, the self-destructive trajectory was already so firmly, ignorantly and irrevocably set in motion, that no corrective action was possible, even by the wisest captain. At that point, the captain became irrelevant, and the core mission shifted from Luxury Voyage to Desperate Rescue. Maybe we need to think more about First Responders than about the captains who are steering us irreversibly into doom?
Great comment that cogently articulates the polarity we confront? What social consequences await us when wisdom is abandoned? Over two thousand years ago, in the courtyard of the temple of Apollo, “Know Thyself” was inscribed as a useful phrase for those who cared about the future. Associated with the Delphic Oracles, it obligated one to understand and accept oneself. Ignoring warning prophesies was certain to lead to disaster. Then, as now, we should not take this phrase to mean solely individual self improvement. Rather we must know ourselves as a collective, including how easy it is for a group to delude itself and fall into either sugar coated fantasy or self destructive revelry. Wisdom is often ignored by the larger collective but small groups and expanding networks must continue to do the work that is necessary, often with no guarantees.
The collective Self is certainly where any hope lies, to avoid going over an historical cliff. As the ego fitfully matures itself from ego into self into Self, the contexts of concern and commitement grow wider and more unpredictable. The abilities to navigate chaos and emergence are increasingly necessary survival skills, to live generatively at the Self scale…. as Rilke so aptly said,
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Living as the “I” who has been circling around for thousands of years is also poignantly akin to Dr. Who, who repeatedly spoke of his grief of having to live immortally, and do good “without hope, without witness, without reward.”
How beautiful. Rilke’s evocation of the Self at cosmic scale.
For my wedding anniversary over 32 years ago, I believe you gifted me a book of photographs and poetry titled “In Spite of Everything, Yes” How apt. How prophetic. Opening it, I came upon these words by George Bernanos: “Hope is a risk that must be run”
“Self-destructive revelry” and “sugar-coated fantasy” seems to be a place of solace in modern times given the complexity and heavy lifting needed to deal with the deluge of often conflicting information coming at us all. Unfortunately, this also is the place that foments the worst of human behavior due to the attractive power and comfort of being certain about what we think we know; whether it’s true or pure BS. I’d rather be in that state of ambiguity that disquiets the soul knowing I’ll be stronger for it once I truly arrive at a place of knowledge if that ever happens.
It seems to me, knowing ones-self is the point of beginning which only happens for me in a peaceful state of mind brought about by disciplined freedom to explore ideas without dogma circling to smother it.
Hi David,
Insightful comment on how complexity can, without support, evoke a reductionist mind-set. And you also amplify the point that certainty provides a false comfort, better as you say to disquiet the soul than fall into the seduction of a fixed point of view. Great to hear from you.
Hi Alan,
Always on point and eloquent are you! Good to be reminded of Keats’ idea of “negative capability.” One minor or major quibble: I wonder if “not knowing is an intentional choice to inhibit the part of the brain wired for certainty, predictability and control.” This is a volitional and conscious choice. For some (many?), depending on circumstance and degree of triggering in the brain, they have only a non-volitional choice to flee, fight or freeze. Making it volitional requires, as you note, “a practiced tolerance for allowing the new to arise from the old.” I strengthen my tolerance by meditating, and still the unknown can surprise and unnerve me. You seem to have a significant tolerance for the unknown. How did you develop that?
You rock!
Hi Mary, Thanks for the insightful comment. I suspect we are more in agreement than quibble. When I say that not knowing is an intentional choice, I don’t mean it mechanically or short term, as in I choose to eat fish tonight, rather than meat. The neural pathways, nervous system, and immune system are “wired” together and we cannot simply override our psychic or physiological nature with simple cognitive commands. What is meant by my words is a practice of mindfulness and behavior (beliefs and actions) that allow me to sit with the discomfort rather than react, and to remind myself that beyond my not knowing is the possibility of something unexpected that is better aligned with reality than my current state. Meditation, as you suggest, is one of the practices that allow this to happen. It would be wonderful to elaborate on other activities, cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and behavioral, that allow increased tolerance of the unknown. I’m sure of it.