Uncertain

How to Turn Your Biggest Fear into Your Greatest Power

By: Arie Kruglanski

Narrated by: Esh Alladi

Brought to you by Penguin.

How much do we rely upon certainty? And, how does the way we deal with uncertainty impact our future and our lives?

Uncertainty is one of the defining issues of our time. Certainty has a habit of slipping away, further into our futures and we now have to deal with the uncertainties of our present, every day. The stability we once had is disappearing, and fast. Vast changes in society are shifting our realities: An earth-shaking global pandemic, changing attitudes and approaches to employment, with an increase in freelance and temporary work undermines people's ability to plan for the future. And, there is an ever decreasing sense of trust in what was once hallowed: the government, the media, education, religion, medicine. Instead, we use the internet which provides us with a wave of conflicting advice.

When we can no longer make sense of the world together, insecurity takes over. We develop anxiety and confusion about our purpose, and in searching for certainty find it in autocratic leaders and populism. Democracy begins to fade as our uncertainty grows.

If we are aware of our need for certainty, and understand why we behave instinctively in the way that we do, we can better understand how to deal with stress and pressure. We can start to make decisions that aren't informed by anxiety. We can shed light not only on historical trends but understand how we change those trends forever, for a better future.

©2023 Arie Kruglanski (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Disappointing: biased and flawed.

This book is a great idea as a concept but lacked in execution. I was looking forward to reading this book for months. I am sourly disappointed by this book. Felt repetitive and he is rehashing the same ideas over and over again in different format to fill the pages. I was disappointed with the bias tone the author undertook about certain ethnic groups, that he kept referring to in the book. I am not sure I can trust an author who plugs is his own biases about certain ethnic and religious groups and lacks the ability to self-reflect on his own group. The point of this book after all was to keep an open mind and foster cognitive flexibility enough to be able to be critical, and embrace uncertainty how ironic!