Ambiguity - II

As I have stated before, we live in a world full of ambiguous situations. However, we seem to be hardwired to avoid ambiguity. This ofcourse made sense in our remote past. If I am a hunter-gatherer, then I better be sure that the shadow I see in the bush I am about to pass is not some lion or other dangerous beast that could attack and kill me. If I am an early farmer, I better be sure about when to plant so that I don't go hungry later on.

So when we encounter ambiguous situations in the modern world, we are unsure how to react. By definition, ambiguous situations are novel ones; If we had encountered a similar situation previously, we would have some idea how to react. The human body has two basic responses to a given situation: fight or flight. Both types require a fairly high level of certainty. Ambiguous situations do not lend themselves to the required level. As a result, our bodies are under almost constant stress. This ultimately leads to high levels of chronic stress related problems in the populace.

Unfortunately, the level of ambiguity in society is not going down. Rather the opposite is happening. Scientific and technical discoveries are on an exponential trajectory. These often lead to a high level of social changes occurring in society. Take the whole social media phenomenon at whose apex Facebook is currently sitting. This has introduced a whole new method of interaction. But the rules are not clear. For example, what is a poke? What happens if I "poke" somebody. Is it polite? Rude? Does it send some kind of message that I don't want to send? If I see somebody's information, am I being curious or am I stalking? Should I bombard my friends with constant status updates? All these are important questions with as yet no clear answers. There is no doubt that as a society we will evolve some standardized response to these types of question in this type of situation. But then we will encounter some new type of situation and again we will have the same problem.

Our situation is like being on a treadmill that keeps going faster and faster and so we have to run harder and harder in order to stay upright. This is ultimately exhausting and many people give up what seems to be a hopeless struggle. Is there then no solution? Are we doomed to keep struggling in the face of new, ambiguous situations that will crop up with monotonous and ever increasing regularity? Personally I am hopeful. I like to think that we will come up with some heuristics to help guide us through this ambiguous maze that modernity has constructed around us.

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.