Excerpt from 'Reading/ Feeling: If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part of Your Revolution.'Brian Massumi:'In every situation there are any number of levels of organisation and tendencies in play, in co-operation with each other or at cross-purposes. The way all the elements interrelate is so complex that it isn't necessarily comprehensible in one go. There is always a sort of vagueness surrounding a situation, an uncertainty. This uncertainty can actually be empowering - once you realise that it gives you a margin or manoeuvrability and you focus on that, rather than projecting success or failure. There is an opening to experiment, to try and see. This brings a sense of potential to the situation... it is an open threshold - a threshold of potential. You are only ever present in passing. If you look at it that way you don't have to feel boxed in by it, no matter what it's horrors and no matter what rationally you expect will come... The question of which next step to take is a lot less intimidating that how to read a far off goal in the distant future...''Ethics is completely situational, it's completely pragmatic... Ethics is about how we inhabit uncertainty, together.' From 'Wait But Why' post "Religion for the Non-religious'From 'Wait But Why' post "Religion for the Non-religious'Excerpt from 'Wait But Why's' Tim Urban's post 'Religion for the Non-Religious''The nonsensical thing about humans feigning certainty because we're scared is that in the old days, when it seemed on the surface that we were the center of all creation, uncertainty was frightening because it made our reality seem so much bleaker than we had thought-but now, with so much more uncovered, things look highly bleak for us as people and as a species, so our fear should welcome uncertainty.'http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/10/religion-for-the-nonreligious.html (truly excellent, recommend having a read and a laugh)
