“I’m not surprised that in a time of hideous precarity so many of us would find ourselves tempted by the false grandiosities of certainty. But we must not confuse certainty with safety — in fact, certainty is the end of the imagination and therefore the definition of unsafety. Nor should we confuse unknowing with ignorance. To unknow is to admit limits, to acknowledge that others might have answers you lack, to recognize our exquisite interdependence as people, and best of all to seek within. To dwell in unknowing is to put your phone away and be for a brief moment completely, imperfectly, human. In times like ours unknowing is excellent proof against our society’s inhumanity, against the lizard supremacy of certainty. There is wisdom in the question deferred, the question without an immediate answer. Tolerance and unity, too. And art, as well, if we can tolerate the fact that we are all forever a question without answers, a beautiful unknown, an infinite unknowing.” ArtHumanityKnowingDangerSafetyCertaintyImperfectionUnknowingPrecariousness Author:Junot Díaz
“It probably goes without saying that certainty is also the great enemy of art, and the deadly enemy of the artist. I suspect the artists that will speak to our moment (and survive it ) best will be ones with the lowest levels of certainty, who haven’t allowed the lure of social media to turn them into certainty pimps, who recall Milan Kundera’s observation that the novelist/artist teaches us to comprehend the world as a question, not an answer. As Kundera notes, “There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.” The artists who I’m most interested in these days are the ones who struggle always to be “heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.” ArtWisdomAnswersToleranceCertaintyQuestionsArtists Author:Junot Díaz
“In the nine years since [Robert] Harris’s novel [Conclave] was published our culture has, if anything, become more enamored with certainty, not less — which is really saying something. Ours is a culture, a society, that seems fantastically certain of certainty. Certainty rules our political discourse, an our-side-is-right-the-other-side-wrong absolutism that the internet helps to empower. As Warzel and Caulfield lamented in The Atlantic recently, ours is a culture “where every event — every human success or tragedy — becomes little more than evidence to score political points... It is a culture where you never have to change your mind or even confront uncomfortable information.” You don’t need to be Wittgenstein to recognize that certainty as a habit of the mind, as an epistemological reflex, ain’t been doing us any favors — not at the level of the individual or the society. Certainty is a state of final judgment — one might even say terminal judgment. Certainty is the opposite of curiosity and open-ness, and about the worst form of knowing there is because it brooks no discussion, no amelioration, no correction, no testing.” ComfortJudgmentCertaintyDiscomfortAbsolutismRobert HarrisConclave Author:Junot Díaz