To Solve Our Problems, We Need to Be Less Certain
If you look at any news website or social media feed, it seems clear that our societies are being torn apart politically. Too many of us have come to see our ideological opponents—whether they’re online, across from us at the dinner table, or in the break room at our workplace—as little more than bigots, snowflakes, or just plain idiots. Many of us are asking, whether quietly in our own minds or loudly for others to hear: how will we end this rancor and stop being at each other’s throats?
The short answer is that we need to be less certain—or, put another way, we need to avoid what I refer to as the Certainty Trap. This is true whether you’re fearful of the prospect of a right-wing takeover or a woke revolution, concerned about climate change or government overregulation, or alarmed by a growing wave of white identitarianism or a surge of migrants at the border. I don’t expect you to believe me just yet. Indeed, sometimes when discussing the pitfalls and dangers of certainty, people tell me that avoiding the Certainty Trap by questioning ourselves more and judging others less might be an interesting intellectual exercise, but it will not help solve real problems in the real world—as though there’s a dividing line between the two goals.
If you’re wondering how common this trap is, here’s one way to think about it: if you’ve ever felt that the answers to complex problems are simple and obvious and that anyone who disagrees must be ignorant or hateful, you’ve been trapped. Rest assured, even if you have been doing this, you’re in excellent company. We wouldn’t be where we are today unless pretty much all of us have done, or still do, the same.
We are most prone to falling into the Certainty Trap when we are confronted with something that we find objectionable from a moral or ethical standpoint. But even then, we can and should avoid it. For example, when Uganda passed one of the world’s strictest laws in the world against homosexuality, I wrote a piece called “The Problem with Calling the Ugandan Law Homophobic.” In it, I argued that calling the law homophobic was a way of giving yourself permission to simply dismiss its supporters with a wave of the hand. I said that instead of calling it “homophobic,” an opponent could be more specific. I might say I oppose the law because “I believe we shouldn’t criminalize the sexual behavior or preferences of consenting adults.” In this sense, my condemnation doesn’t require any assumption about what’s in the hearts of people on the other side of the issue. The first comes from within the Certainty Trap; the second doesn’t. A friend immediately commented on the article, chastising me for making what he viewed as a semantic argument when the lives of the homosexual population of Uganda were on the line. To him, I said, “It’s because it’s important that I want to make sure I’m being clear in my thinking and am ready and able to engage.”
A sense of moral superiority, a feeling made up of anger laced with contempt, fuels righteous indignation. And it gives us permission to disengage. As good as it feels, it’s played a large role in getting us to the point we’re at now. It’s done this by alienating us from one another—by leading us to believe that, especially when it comes to complex social problems, the world can be neatly divided into people who are good and bad, right and wrong, evil and virtuous. This can be done because the good people know who’s on which list and what got them there.
So, we’re at a crossroads, with a decision to make.
One option is to lean into our righteous indignation. We can admit that we like feeling morally superior more than we like figuring out how to get along with people we disagree with. Such a confession would probably come as little surprise, given we’ve built a culture where the same moral outrage that pushes people to extremes can get you more likes on X or, if you’re lucky, even make you a star. If that’s the world we want to inhabit, then more power to us. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. But, if this is the case, it might make sense to stop griping about the fallout that comes from this culture we’ve created.
For those of us who don’t think this is such a great option, there is another one: we need to be willing and ready to both challenge and clarify our thinking. Perhaps you have a deep and abiding sense of altruism, or simply wish to understand, as best you can, what’s true about the world. Or perhaps you are looking for pragmatic solutions to some particularly concerning social problem. No matter your particular reason for wanting to change our current course, escaping from the Certainty Trap is the first step. Not because you will have changed your mind on the issues that matter to you—you don’t have to—but because you want to be part of something bigger; you fear where we’re headed more than you fear questioning your own sense of moral superiority; and you want to strengthen society by having a more robust understanding of the world around us and perhaps even of ourselves.
I recently gave a talk to a group of Harvard alumni. There was a woman present—let’s call her Jane—who, only a few days prior to the talk, had the traumatic experience of being assaulted in the New York City subway. She was, understandably, still upset, although she was physically fine. She was angry at the woman who assaulted her and indignant about the slow response time on the part of the police. And yet, at the end of our discussion, she let out a slow exhale and remarked how much better and more relaxed she felt.
Without in any way minimizing what she had been through, thinking about uncertainty gave her space to consider whether the woman who assaulted her might not be a horrible person. Maybe she herself had been traumatized. Or maybe she needed help that she hadn’t been able to get. Jane was able to wonder whether the police might have a reason for their delayed response. Perhaps they were woefully understaffed. Or in the middle of an emergency. Maybe it wasn’t abject indifference or laziness after all.
None of this meant Jane’s initial conclusions were necessarily wrong—and yet, opening the door to the possibility of a different explanation changed how she viewed the people involved. At the end of the talk, she thanked me, saying she felt happier than when we started. In Jane’s case, uncertainty was a bit like empathy, but without the moral baggage. As important as empathy can be, it doesn’t answer the question of who we should empathize with. Ultimately, mine is not a moral argument. It’s about understanding the ways that certainty distorts how we see the world and one another.
Avoiding the Certainty Trap won’t solve all the world’s problems. But undermining moral outrage is a necessary first step toward having the conversations we so desperately need. It’s how we can move toward seeing each other as fellow citizens rather than enemies to destroy—something that democracy itself requires us to do. What’s more, just like Jane, it might even make you happier. There’s something rather freeing about knowing there’s always a chance you’re wrong. Perhaps that’s because it means there’s always a chance the other person is wrong, too.
One way to think about the challenge we face when it comes to breaking out of the Certainty Trap is to imagine ourselves in Ancient Greece. It turns out we can learn a few things about certainty from Socrates.
According to history books, Socrates regularly challenged the people of Athens by pressing them on what they thought they knew about the world. Regardless of the topic, he is said to have asked, “But why . . . ?,” pushing his conversation partner until they realized that what they thought they knew for sure was actually based on a series of assumptions. We are told that he would often keep pressing until there were no questions left to ask.
Socrates is also remembered for linking the concept of wisdom to a deep and abiding sense of the limitations of our own knowledge, yielding the quote, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
While there’s a way to hear his words as a simple declaration of the value of humility, they also point to something deeper. Perhaps Socrates knew, even then, the powerful implications of forgetting to question what we know. Maybe he saw that it could lead to unparalleled divisions and resentment in a society. In this sense, maybe his words are a warning. Just imagine a society cleaving in such a way that dueling groups lay conflicting claims to what’s real and neither acknowledges their fallibility. Sound familiar?
This essay is excerpted from The Certainty Trap: Why We Need to Question Ourselves More―and How We Can Judge Others Less, which is available for purchase at these paid links: Amazon, Bookshop, and Pitchstone.
Ilana Redstone is a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and co-directs the Mill Institute at the University of Austin. More about her work is available at www.ilanaredstone.com.