Got certainty?
Certainty feels good. But it's a short step toward avoiding reality and falling into dogmatic thinking.
Are you certain?
It’s one thing to be certain that 2+2=4.
It’s something else again to be certain about a concept, an idea, or about people and situations.
Corporate Boards want leaders to be certain their proposed strategy will be successful. But if you think about that for a minute, it’s clearly ridiculous and impossible. Obviously no leader will suggest a strategy they think won’t work, but in the end, all they can do is say they think this strategy is the best option that’s most likely to succeed.
Managers are expected – often by themselves as well as by their leaders and mentors – to be certain their approach to leading will be effective in creating high-performing teams. But situations are flexible and nuanced, and people are unpredictable.
Certainty can be a dangerous thing. Certainty leads to deliberately overlooking the reality of what’s happening - or could happen - in favor of what you believe.
If you think this is something you’d never do, I invite you to consider things you’re certain about. Is there anything you believe so deeply and certainly that you can’t even hypothetically imagine ever changing your mind? Is there anything you believe so deeply and certainly that you refuse to even enter into a conversation about it with someone with a different perspective?
Certainty tends to be rooted in emotional belief structures. And you can’t logic someone out of an emotional belief. They didn’t get to a place of certainty about their belief through logic; they got there emotionally. Logic had, and has, no part to play.
I’m not denying the existence of moral precepts and personal values. Clearly, morality and values are important. But we can only be certain about them for ourselves. And I would suggest that values can – and do – change over a lifetime … so even there, certainty is potentially problematic.
Yes, we can be collectively certain that murder is wrong, or that stealing is wrong. (There are still gray areas – self-defense, for instance.) But when your certainty about something impinges on someone else’s simple ability to live life as they wish? That’s where certainty becomes problematic, to say the least.
When someone is so certain that they’re being harmed by someone else’s life, just because that person isn’t living in accordance with their specific individual values? Now certainty becomes a very real problem – not just for them and the people they’re targeting, but for all of us. Because that’s where certainty starts to become groupthink, and groupthink starts to become anger and violence.
Being able to see different perspectives and even occasionally change your mind about something isn’t weakness or “flip-flopping.” It’s growth, strength, and maturity.
And it’s worth remembering the Wiccan principle “And it harm none, do as you will.”
(For the record, I’m not Wiccan.)