Uncertainty

While I was out biking recently, I was thinking about how our modern information society with its maps, searches, and data about every aspect of our lives is deleterious to uncertainty (e.g., we have less chance of getting lost with our computerized maps, we can get reviews for the “best” product or restaurant, we can search for specific books or reports).

Yet in losing uncertainty, we also lose some important things that add texture to life: the possibility that comes with the unknown, adventure, the surprises and epiphanies that appear when we wander off our intended path. This aspect of the information age seems similar to the Calvinistic concept of predestination: the end is already known, and thus we have lost some free will and with that the freedom to save ourselves.

Sure I am exaggerating, but while knowledge is power, so is mystery. Life is not a damned machine. Nor is it a movie whose every plot twist can be predicted.

Thus endeth the homily.