Uncertainty and Creativity

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"Uncertainty and Creativity"by Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein 1997. ([email protected])

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from the author.]

(Talk atForum 2000: Concerns and Hopes on the Threshold of the New Millennium, Prague, Sept. 3-6, 1997)

The first half of the twenty-first century will, I believe, be far more difficult, more unsettling, and yet moreopen, than anything we have known in the twentieth century. I say this on three premises, none of which I havetime to argue here. The first is that historical systems, like all systems, have finite lives. They have beginnings,a long development, and finally, as they move far from equilibrium and reach points of bifurcation, a demise.The second premise is that two things are true at these points of bifurcation: small inputs have large outputs (asopposed to times of the normal development of a system when large inputs have small outputs); and theoutcome of such bifurcations is inherently indeterminate.

The third premise is that the modern world-system, as an historical system, has entered into a terminal crisis,and is unlikely to exist in fifty years time. However, since its outcome is uncertain, we do not know whether theresulting system (or systems) will be better or worse than the one in which we are living, but we do know thatthe period of transition will be a terrible time of troubles, since the stakes of the transition are so high, theoutcome so uncertain, and the ability of small inputs to affect the outcome so great.

It is widely thought that the collapse of the Communisms in 1989 marks a great triumph of liberalism. I see itrather as marking the definitive collapse of liberalism as the defining geoculture of our world-system.Liberalism essentially promised that gradual reform would ameliorate the inequalities of the world-system, andreduce the acute polarization. The illusion that this was possible within the framework of the modern world-system has in fact been a great stabilizing element, in that it legitimated the states in the eyes of their

populations and promised them a heaven on earth in the foreseeable future. The collapse of the Communisms,along with the collapse of the national liberation movements in the Third World, and the collapse of faith in theKeynesian model in the Western world were all simultaneous reflections of popular disillusionment in thevalidity and reality of the reformist programs each propagated. But this disillusionment, however merited,knocks the props from under popular legitimation of the states, and effectively undoes any reason why theirpopulations should tolerate the continuing and increasing polarization of our world-system. I therefore expectconsiderable turmoil of the kind we have already been seeing in the 1990's, spreading from the Bosnias andRwandas of this world to the wealthier (and assertedly more stable) regions of the world (such as the UnitedStates).

These, as I say, are premises, and you may not be convinced of them, since I have no time to argue them.[1] I

wish therefore simply to draw the moral and political conclusions from my premises. The first conclusion is thatprogress, unlike what the Enlightenment in all its forms preached, is not at all inevitable. But I do not acceptthat it is therefore impossible. The world has not morally advanced in the last several thousand years, but itcould. We can move in the direction of what Max Weber called "substantive rationality," that is, rational valuesand rational ends, arrived at collectively and intelligently.[1] These theses have been argued at some length in two recent books: Immanuel Wallerstein,After Liberalism(New York: New Press, 1995), and Terence K. Hopkins & I. Wallerstein, coords., The Age of Transition:Trajectory of the World-System, 1945-2025(London: Zed Press, 1996)

The second conclusion is that the belief in certainties, a fundamental premise of modernity, is blinding andcrippling. Modern science, that is, Cartesian-Newtonian science, has been based on the certainty of certainty.

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The basic assumption is that there exist objective universal laws governing all natural phenomena, that theselaws can be ascertained by scientific enquiry, and that once such laws are known, we can, starting from any setof initial conditions, predict perfectly the future and the past.

It is often argued that this concept of science is merely a secularization of Christian thought, representingmerely a substitution of "nature" for God, and that the requisite assumption of certainty is derived from and isparallel to the truths of religious profession. I do not wish here to start a theological discussionper se, but it hasalways struck me that the belief in an omnipotent God, a view common at least to the so-called Western

religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), is in fact both logically and morally incompatible with a belief incertainty, or at least in any human certainty. For if God is omnipotent, then humans cannot constrain him byedicting what they believe is eternally true, or God would not then be omnipotent. No doubt, the scientists ofearly modern times, many of whom were quite pious, may have thought they were arguing theses consonantwith the reigning theology, and no doubt many theologians of the time gave them cause to think that, but it issimply not true that a belief in scientific certainty is a necessary complement to religious belief systems.

Furthermore, the belief in certainty is now under severe, and I would say very telling, attack within naturalscience itself. I need only refer you to Ilya Prigogine's latest book,La fin des certitudes[2], in which he arguesthat, even in the inner sanctum of natural science, dynamic systems in mechanics, the systems are governed bythe arrow of time and move inevitably far from equilibrium. These new views are called the science ofcomplexity, partly because they argue that Newtonian certitudes hold true only in very constrained, very simplesystems, but also because they argue that the universe manifests the evolutionary development of complexity,and that the overwhelming majority of situations cannot be explained by assumptions of linear equilibria andtime-reversibility.[2] Paris: Odile Jacob, 1996. (In English: The End of Certainty(New York: Free Press, 1997.)

The third conclusion is that in human social systems, the most complex systems in the universe, therefore thehardest to analyze, the struggle for the good society is a continuing one. Furthermore, it is precisely in periodsof transition from one historical system to another one (whose nature we cannot know in advance) that humanstruggle takes on the most meaning. Or to put it another way, it is only in such times of transition that what wecall free will outweighs the pressures of the existing system to return to equilibria. Thus, fundamental change ispossible albeit never certain, and this fact makes claims on our moral responsibility to act rationally, in good

faith, and with strength to seek a better historical system.

We cannot know what this would look like in structural terms, but we can lay out the criteria on the basis ofwhich we would call an historical system substantively rational. It is a system that is largely egalitarian andlargely democratic. Far from seeing any conflict between these two objectives, I would argue that they areintrinsically linked to each other. An historical system cannot be egalitarian if it is not democratic, because anundemocratic system is one that distributes power unequally, and this means that it will also distribute all otherthings unequally. And it cannot be democratic if it is not egalitarian, since an inegalitarian system means thatsome have more material means than others and therefore inevitably will have more political power.

The fourth conclusion I draw is that uncertainty is wondrous, and that certainty, were it to be real, would be

moral death. If we were certain of the future, there could be no moral compulsion to do anything. We would befree to indulge every passion and pursue every egoism, since all actions fall within the certainty that has beenordained. If everything is uncertain, then the future is open to creativity, not merely human creativity but thecreativity of all nature. It is open to possibility, and therefore to a better world. But we can only get there as weare ready to invest our moral energies in its achievement, and as we are ready to struggle with those who, underwhatever guise and for whatever excuse, prefer an inegalitarian, undemocratic world.

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