In Praise of Uncertainty or: Should we stop worrying and learn to love uncertainty?

Born ignorant, we start off by pursuing knowledge with the false promise that it leads to certainty. We grow into adulthood with the illusion of knowledge, but midway we settle for an unsettling state of doubt. Further down the road, we mature into a humbling recognition of our ignorance, and finally while stepping into senility, we face yet another tsunami of unpleasant unknown unknowns awaiting us as mortal beings.

But, should we pity the human race for his inescapable haplessness in his uncertain journey? Or should we stop worrying about uncertainty and learn to love it?

Looking back at 33 years of my life, I have realized that whenever I was at the height of my uncertainty curve, I experienced an extraordinary flow in my life. Whenever I wanted to change jobs, places of residence, or fields of study, I was most stressed, but at the same time, most productive, excited, and hopeful. In contrast, when I felt even an infinitesimal grain of certainty in my life, though for brief moments, those days were replaced with unproductive and agonizingly depressing moments.

Though it seems unsettling to be in a state of limbo, the alternative (i.e., certainty) is at best an illusion, on average a depressing melancholy, and at worst a perilous state of mind ripe for intolerance. 

The latter property of certainty comes from an illusion of certainty embedded not in the dynamics of the outside world, but of our inside beliefs. Who can deny the fact that the worst atrocities in human history have been committed by staunch followers of ideas promising certainty in the veracity of ideologies and infallibility of leaders?

Inquietude of uncertainty and doubt, though disagreeable, is to be preferred to the dullness and quietude of certainty. Let’s stop pursuing certainty, for it is degenerating.

A Tale of Two Cities: Why Unequal Attention Is Being Paid to Baghdad and Paris?

A question is raised in the aftermaths of the Paris massacre: why do Paris attacks and similar events in the western world provoke higher levels of hype, while equally comparable attacks in Baghdad and Beirut go unheeded?

The answer seems to be straightforward. Some countries have the soft power to have many people on board supporting them when events like these occur. The soft power is not something with which a country is born; it should be procured through ages of perseverance in creating progressive political and cultural values. This is what makes people more ‘interested’ in the destiny of one country than that of the other.

I am sure most people, who express their solidarity with Parisians, have spent some time in Paris or Parisian cultural products have penetrated their hearts and impacted their minds one way or another. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Baghdad or other isolated cities and countries where comparable events occur. How many people around the world have ever heard of the names of the cities in the Middle East where unspeakable atrocities are being committed?

The equality argument is also raised for paying equal attention to similar events in different parts of the world. Of course, legally speaking, everybody is born equal, but this is not the case from a political or economic standpoint. In politics, save voting rights, equality is almost non-existent. And as we know, in economic life, we are all born unequal. (I am but describing.)

In international law and politics, which is only superficially coated with the idea of equality of nations, there are circumstances under which a country may temporarily lose its right to be treated equally. If a country is a rogue state, it should not expect other countries to treat it equally.

With so many self-imposed sanctions against themselves, which make them more and more isolated and their contribution to human civilization meager and negligible, most Middle Eastern countries and their citizens are far from getting equal attention of the world for comparable events.

It is up to a nation to make itself unequal upwards or downwards.

PS: The concept of attention economics might also be helpful in understanding the unequal attention paid to the events of the same nature. This Econtalk episode can also shed light on the issue. 

Political Economy Lessons from Childhood Stories

One of my favorite childhodood anecdotes, which the passage of time could not wash away from my mind, concerns the story of a young preacher of an ideological creed and an old lay passerby at the dawn of an ideological movement.

The story goes that a new convert to an emerging ideology was passionately preaching about the leader of the ideology in an old town, describing how perfect the world would have looked like had his leader’s ideology prevailed, how beautiful life would have become and how justice would have ruled the land had the leader been in charge…

The passerby who happened to hear those words stopped and asked the preacher:

–  "Son, does your leader have a belly or not?"

–  "Yes." Answered the preacher.

–  "Then, he is no different.” Said the passerby and strolled away indifferently…

So insightful, timeless, and universal are the lessons of our childhood parables.

For more on the insights of the story, listen to this EconTalk episode with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on his book "the Logic of Political Survival".