In the Industrial Age, for the first time in our long human history, we were conditioned into believing that our life, our environment could be made certain: regular salary increment and a sure retirement; regular working times; lower and lower variance of manufactured items and processes, etc.
The entire system was geared to make us believe that certain was normal. We tried hard to fit every event into normality; to diminish as much as possible the impact of unavoidable variation (like weather, for instance) on our lives. Any hindrance to our existence was to be considered a problem that needed to be addressed to bring it back to normality.
We need to recognize now how much of an illusion that was. In addition, that turned out to be quite boring. Freak events will continue to happen forever. We need to live with a large amount of uncertainty in our lives to be successful and invent the world we want.
Many people still live in the dream of the Industrial Age certainty (although, luckily, much less since the 2008 economic ‘crisis’ which shook many ‘certain’ existences). This myth continues to be propagated by large sections of our current institutions like social security, public schools… It is important to recognize it is a myth, and resolutely move into the Collaborative Age mindset of thriving on uncertainty.
