This is a choice we rarely name.
Putting effort into how much ambiguity we can handle can define a career and give us a path forward in our social and cultural interactions as well.
Our desire for clarity is based on safety and how we think about risk. If you know exactly what to expect, you won’t be held responsible for things that feel like they’re out of your control.
Clarity pushes us to put things in a category, a predictable box, well-labeled.
Ambiguity, on the other hand, is the nature of the future. All interactions with other people, with complex systems and with what hasn’t happened yet are somewhat unpredictable.
That range of outcomes is where possibility lies.
“I’m not sure.”
“This might not work.”
“We’ll be okay.”
Pretending that the ambiguous is certain is a short-term sort of bravado that works in the movies and politics but not in real life.
For the rest of us, there’s the chance to embrace the soft edges of ‘perhaps’ on our way to make things better.
HT to Seth B.
The cultural impresario has always had leverage.
Invest time and money and put on a show. Start a cable network, a book publishing company or become a concert promoter. You’re the gatekeeper, an adjudicator of status, a person who can transform people’s lives simply by amplifying and spreading ideas and allowing art to reach its audience.
Time and money were apparently the gating factors. It takes a while to turn a profit, and it’s uncertain and hard work.
Except…
New platforms and tools remove both time and money as barriers.
Penn and Teller needed their fame and the CW network to launch their cable show Fool Us. But now, anyone can start a competitor on YouTube in a weekend.
A radio pundit needed to spend years to build a syndicated network of terrestrial stations, but now you can start a podcast, in your basement, for free. In a weekend.
Gallerists don’t need galleries, and you don’t even need a building to coordinate a foster-home-based pet shelter.
So what’s the impediment?
I’m guessing that if you got the call today, you could put together your ideas for a book, or five minutes of standup or even the software you’d code.
But we don’t need the specific call. We’ve all been called.
The barrier is simple: fear. The fear of beginning and of sticking with it. The fear of succeeding (or failing). The fear of impostor syndrome. And the fear of going forward without a guarantee.
So let’s call it that. Fear is real, but fear might not be rational.
Begin.
A long time ago, football coaches realized that watching previous games was a good way to help players learn to do better.
Alas, the only thing we do with “this call may be recorded…” is use it as a cudgel for unempowered shift workers.
If we actually want to improve our interactions, perhaps we should watch the tapes together, after the fact, to see how our habits and systems are holding us back. It works for salespeople, programmers and doctors too.
For an upcoming blog post, I’m collecting a list of small businesses that are worth bypassing Amazon for. Holiday shopping is around the corner, and sometimes people want to put in the effort to buy something that takes more than a click.
Folks like Burlap and Barrel, Gramercy Tools or Askinosie Chocolate–direct trade small businesses.
Applications are now closed, I’m busy editing. THANKS.
[PS! the secret recipes have been updated.]
In his farewell address, he said, “Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course.”
It’s easy to fall in love with the idea that we live in a detached and distant situation. To imagine that culture and society and events out there have no impact on the lives we live.
The coal plant across the country, the goings on in the CEO’s office, the impact of tech on our culture… none of them are very far away. We have more leverage and connection than we want to admit.
Insulation is scarce. Technology, the competition and the shifts in media come for us, whether we seek them out or not.
It doesn’t pay to fret about things we can’t influence, but we might be able to influence more than we realize.
Perhaps isolation was useful for George. It’s clearly not true now.
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