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Coherence: the Risk of Making Sense in an Uncertain World
Should we hold a paradox lightly?
I See It; I Understand It.
We humans love to make sense of things. We’re programmed for it, we look, we see confusion, we might feel puzzled, we look again, we see a pattern. Phew relief. The world makes sense!
Or does it…?
As Daniel Kahneman says,
Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.
It seems that our need for the world (however small we define the word ‘world’) to make sense, is stronger than our willingness to sit in the unknown, to appreciate paradox, to know that there is so much that can’t be known and that anything we think makes sense is likely to shift, perhaps within minutes, perhaps within hours, perhaps within months, or even millennia.
Desires and Humility
This tendency is everywhere, of course, but I was particularly conscious of it recently as an organisation I work with is going through a funding crisis.
I asked one of their leadership team a few weeks ago, while new strategies were being developed,
How attached are you to this organisation…
