Meditations on Uncertainty
Meditations on Uncertainty For the past twenty years, I’ve written stories for newspapers. This can be a heady job; you meet famous people, go to interesting places, paint the first brushstrokes of history. Best of all, it’s a continuing education in how we handle moments of uncertainty: What will the governor do now that he’s been caught with his Argentine mistress? [i] Will a burned-out neurosurgeon stick to his predictable career path or risk everything to teach in the African bush? [ii] The rise of the Internet and other external economic and social factors have fueled doubts about the viability of narrative and investigative journalism, but I suspect that demand for well-told stories will survive. We pay attention to stories because uncertainty is with us all the time, says Marshall Ganz, Harvard public policy lecturer. This presents us with a constant stream of choices. “And because we have so many choices, we are infi