Ambiguity

We live in an ambiguous world. The old certainties have been stripped away leaving us uncertain of where we stand. This phenomenon has occurred no matter where we live as a proliferation of media outlets, the spread of the Internet coupled with the spread of mobile phones and globalization brought each of us in increasingly close contact with other cultures and peoples. The conflict that this engenders can be seen most closely in the children of immigrants. The people who originally immigrated have had a particular kind of upbringing that inculcated in them a particular set of values both moral and cultural. They expect their children to follow these same values heedless of the fact that the children have grown up in a different cultural context. The clash that almost invariably follows often results in the certainties of the parents being destroyed. Nor is this restricted to immigrants. The mere presence of immigrants with their strange customs and values (and often religion) ends up shaking those of the natives themselves. Just as the interaction of two generations of immigrants results in the old certainties of the parents being stripped away, the interaction of immigrants and natives does the same for the latter.

Changes in the social environment also result in ambiguity. As an example, earlier generations of men were generally speaking sure of their place in the world. They were the breadwinners for the family while their wives were the homemakers. Now that women have entered the workforce in large numbers, men are no longer sure of their place in the world specially if the wife ends up earning more money than the husband. The new conditions have resulted in an ambiguity leaving people unsure of how to behave. Nor is the workplace exempt from ambiguity. Again to take the above example, the induction of women in the workforce has rendered old modes of behavior obsolete without specifying new modes. Again an ambiguous situation has been created leaving people unsure of how to behave.