[Infowarrior] - OpEd: The Deadliness of Certainty

[Richard Forno]

The Deadliness of Certainty

By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052602786_pf.html

Freud recognized that human beings have a sex drive and even a death  
drive. Is it possible that we also have an aphorism drive?

We do seem attracted to pat answers and pithy summations -- especially  
from our politicians. It isn't enough to be wise or effective; one  
must be quotable.

In fact, aphorism is the oldest written art form, according to  
aphorism expert and author James Geary ("The World in a Phrase: A  
Brief History of the Aphorism"). Before famed aphorists Mark Twain,  
Dorothy Parker and Woody Allen put the party in repartee, Buddha,  
Jesus and Muhammad were creating buzz. Five thousand years ago, the  
Egyptians and Chinese were chiseling out sturdy statements of  
universal truth.

Les bons mots tend to make us feel better, lending form to our  
thoughts and order to our emotions. They're especially useful in times  
of duress. Eulogies and editorials invariably feature those three  
little words: "As [fill in the blank] said."

Here comes one now: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  
Ahhhh. Feeling better already. Thus was born the Hallelujah Chorus.

Then again, more often these days, a politician's happy turn of phrase  
makes me feel worse. I don't know whether to clap my hands or clutch  
my wallet. Why does the very thing intended to make one feel uplifted  
and inspired make me feel manipulated and skeptical?

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, writing recently in the New York  
Times, inadvertently may have offered a clue. He was explaining that  
people are happiest when they are certain. We don't like not knowing,  
apparently, even when what we know is awful.

Gilbert cited various experiments to make his point, including one  
involving the certifiably awful colostomy. People who knew their  
colostomies would be permanent were happier than people whose  
colostomies might someday be reversed. Gilbert's conclusion: People  
would rather know than not know. Knowing, they can make psychological  
adjustments.

"We find our bootstraps and tug," he wrote. "But we can't come to  
terms with circumstances whose terms we don't yet know."

Gilbert's observations were in the context of our current economic  
woes. As soon as we know how bad things are (or aren't), he said,  
we'll adapt and get along just fine.

He may be right as far as it goes, but the same uncertainty that makes  
human beings unhappy also stimulates the creativity that makes us  
happy. Was Leonardo da Vinci happy? Homer? George Washington? Man's  
drive to create isn't born of contentment but of anxiety attached to  
the unconscious agitation that comes from the greatest certainty ever  
devised: Death.

Here is a truism, if not an aphorism. Without death and the certainty  
of physical finitude, Homo sapiens would never have left the cave.  
Unhappiness and uncertainty -- rather than happiness and certitude --  
are what get us off our duffs.

No misery. No Sistine Chapel.

So what happens to the creative spirit when government steps in to  
soothe our anxieties? Without unhappiness, what happens to culture?  
Without adversity, what happens to motivation? Parents know. Suffice  
to say, the work ethic is not strong among the coddled.

Most important, with all needs met, what happens to freedom -- that  
human recoil against imposed order?

When Rahm Emanuel said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to  
waste," he wasn't the first or the last to express the sentiment.  
George W. Bush was accused of taking advantage of Americans' post- 
Sept. 11 terror to expand executive power. Barack Obama will be  
remembered for creating budget-busting social programs while Americans  
were caught in the headlights of unemployment and economic reversal.

The citizen's fear is the politician's elixir.

Certainty may be the promise of government, but uncertainty is the  
grease of free markets. Uncertainty was also America's midwife.  
Without a tolerance for uncertainty -- and unhappiness -- our nation's  
Founders might have remained in their rockers.

Previous generations understood that life is a gamble of uncertain  
returns. They were sometimes sad because life is sometimes sad. They  
were good at coping in bad times because downturns were more familiar  
than upticks.

Today, we apparently trade liberty for certainty and our once- 
swashbuckling spirit for contentment, preferably in pill form. All we  
need is a nice aphorism to help the medicine go down. Here's one  
beloved by conservatives to get things rolling: "A government big  
enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to  
take from you everything you have."

Happy now?

kparker at kparker.com