Latest news with #doubt
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Peter Carey on Ned Kelly: ‘Did no one see what I saw, that our famous bushranger was a raging poet?'
How very weird to return to this old manuscript, the scene of so much doubt and anguish, not to say obsession. I was a baby when the seed was planted, three years out of school, two years since my devastating failure in the first year of a science degree. I had drifted into advertising where the gods determined I would fall among novelists and playwrights who would lead me to a place I could never have imagined. My most important workmate was a former schoolteacher, 32 years old, the father of six children, but an apprentice just as I was, still waiting for the day when his copy would be accepted by our boss. I drove Barry Oakley to work. He gave me Kerouac's Lonesome Traveler and other books he had reviewed, made sure that I saw Chekhov and Beckett and Ionesco, accompanied me to the first two art exhibitions of my life. It was lunchtime at the office when we boarded the tram to see The Ned Kelly Paintings 1946–47: Sidney Nolan at George's art gallery. I had no expectation of anything except the egg and lettuce sandwich waiting for me back at work, no idea that Nolan's Kelly paintings were about to burn into my brain and leave their mark for ever. It was 1963 and to quote One Hundred Years of Solitude, 'the world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point'. It was the year I discovered Ornette Coleman and Ingmar Bergman, Robbe-Grillet, Bob Dylan, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. I stumbled into James Joyce's Ulysses and – ignorant as I may have been – recognised a holy place, a blasphemous cathedral which had been banned, unbanned, banned again. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads These ecstatic moments are denied the old and wise, reserved for the very young who turn the pages of Ulysses and who can hardly believe that such a string of words exists: I cant help it if Im young still can I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my time living with him so cold never embracing me except sometimes when hes asleep the wrong end of me not knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a womans bottom. Are you allowed to say that? It was the year I read Allen Ginsberg's Howl and 'saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked'. I sought out Max Brown's Australian Son: The Story of Ned Kelly and it was here I found that Ned Kelly had also been a writer tortured by the cruelties of the British law. There were 56 pages and in every one he was on fire, enraged, breathless, a widow's son outlawed. Dear God, I thought, has no one ever really understood what Ned wrote before he robbed the bank at Jerilderie? Did no one see what I saw – that our famous bushranger was a raging poet? my mother and four or five men lagged innocent, and is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also who has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly, fat necked, wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped splay-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as officers of justice or Victorian police who some calls honest gentlemen (Ned Kelly – The Jerilderie Letter) I transcribed the letter and carried it on my person like the relic of a martyred saint. I knew (if no one else did) that I would be a writer and I would know how to do something with this letter when the time arrived. In 1964 I wrote my first unpublishable novel. In 1966 I tried again. So it went. Attempts. Failures. Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground. By 1974, when I finally became airborne, I had lost the Jerilderie Letter. Years passed. Three lives later I was living in New York City. It was 1993 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art was exhibiting the same Kelly paintings I had seen 30 years before. If I did not rush to see them it was because I was certain they could never dazzle the man as they had the callow boy. But my friend the Vassar professor was acting as a docent for the exhibition, and it was he who finally persuaded me to visit and then – dear Jesus – what wonders. I was amazed and proud, of us, of Ned, of Nolan, and I began taking my downtown friends uptown see the show. And as I circled the rooms telling the strange story to my victims, it struck me: I was going to write this bloody novel after all. Why write about Ned Kelly, said my old Sydney friend. We know all about him. And yes, we knew the police reports and the court transcripts. We knew the Land Acts and the day Ned fought Wild Wright. We knew Jerilderie, Euroa, Stringybark Creek and Constable Fitzpatrick. We knew the history all the way to the execution in Melbourne jail. But you cannot know a boy's soul from a police report. And Ned Kelly was a boy for most of his short life, and we – having the image of the bearded outlaw in our mind – hadn't spared a thought for that smooth-cheeked boy who loved his mother, lost his father to police, was apprenticed to a bushranger named Harry Power. I raided Ian Jones' Ned Kelly to find my story's spine but I also read obsessively around the subject. I visited Eleven Mile Creek, Benalla, Stringybark Creek, Greta, the first time with my dear friend Paul Priday and Sam, my 11-year-old son, the second time with the architect Richard Leplastrier and publisher Laurie Muller. Laurie was a horseman. Laurie taught me the landscape from a horseman's point of view, forced me to climb hills I would rather have ignored, sleep out in a swag on a rainy night when, honestly, I preferred a motel bed. The three of us visited Powers Lookout while hungover from duty-free Laphroaig, but not even alcohol poisoning could diminish Leplastrier's supreme visual intelligence. I made notes, saved a leaf at Stringybark Creek, composed an encyclopedia of smells. The book that finally emerged owes so much to Richard and Laurie, but also to my first 10 years of life in Bacchus Marsh, one hour's drive from Beveridge where Ned was born. It was just 60 years since Ned's departure when I arrived and you could hear the language of Ned's letter in the playground of State School #28. And it was that language that made me want to write True History of the Kelly Gang, to make a modern poetry from the voice of a hero who was condemned to death by the founder of State Library Victoria, the same institution that now holds his Jerilderie Letter, his armour and every word I wrote about his tragedy. All sorts of problems lay ahead of me, but I would never have a problem with the voice. It's easy to recognise a writer who's just come from their desk. You can see it in their haunted eyes, as if they're still living in another world. This manuscript is that world. It is where I lived a thousand days, always confident about the voice but, Lord … what was it really like to be an Irish immigrant a century ago? What was it like to be 16, locked inside a cell in Beechworth. What were the dimensions of the cell. Where was the shelf, the cruel unbending bed? What does a boy feel to have his father stolen from him, handcuffed to the stirrup iron of a policeman's mare. My notebooks are a mess of endless questions, inept drawings. What happens when Easter arrives in Australian autumn instead of Holy Irish spring? When the convicts were transported was the banshee left behind? For Ned to come alive I needed to think of things we had never thought before. That is the thrill and the terror of a writer's life, to walk out on the tightrope every day. The manuscript reveals none of this. If you read the bottom left-hand corner of the manuscript you will easily learn what words were printed on a given day. But there is nothing to show what words have been inserted, transposed, deleted, when the banshee crawled in from the dark. You could ask my computer if you had the skill, but the computer isn't talking and the only way to get the information is to read all 4,000 pages of the manuscript, not like you or I might read a finished book, but like a saint or mad person in a cell, someone with patience to annotate a river or a cloud. As it happens, my published novel imagines this very reader. Is it he or she or they? A librarian perhaps? It is a someone I invented, a someone who has collected Ned's scattered pages and collated them into 13 parcels. This has allowed me to map the passage of time, to add layers of information, and also – an important point – provide chapters for my readers. Of course my Ned was not thinking in terms of books or chapters. He had no time for commas and it is this that gives his voice an urgency and passion, never pausing when it would be grammatically correct to do so. 'This is a fabulous story,' my New York agent said, 'But you don't need to write it like this.' But I did need to write it just like that. And she was the excellent agent who had long ago introduced me to Gary Fisketjon (who published Cormac McCarthy) and who I knew would surely know how to read what I had written. I had never wished for line editing from anyone, but now I welcomed Gary's insistent questioning. Yes he was American and we can be amused that he queried the word mopoke. But he got the book, loved the book, never relented in his demand that it be as good as it could be, that the jacket be right, that the map be perfect. There was no escape from his passion. He tracked me down in Europe and spent five hours on the phone arguing about ampersands because he wanted posterity to fully understand that you knew what you were doing. He made lists for the foreign publishers and proofreaders who would publish later, just so they would understand that what might be an error in The Chicago Manual of Style was exactly what the author wished in print. Gary went out on a limb for that book, sold it to the sales force, the booksellers and anyone else who would listen to him. Finally I knew what writers mean when they say they were 'well published'. Some have questioned my title, but Gary never did. He trusted the book was what Ned named it, with a label declaring it was the true story of a widow's son who had been subject of perjury, false witness by the police and press. True History it must be and nothing less. This is an extract from State Library Victoria's exhibition Creative Acts: Artists and their Inspirations, on from 15 August 2025 to 31 May 2026
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Peter Carey on Ned Kelly: ‘Did no one see what I saw, that our famous bushranger was a raging poet?'
How very weird to return to this old manuscript, the scene of so much doubt and anguish, not to say obsession. I was a baby when the seed was planted, three years out of school, two years since my devastating failure in the first year of a science degree. I had drifted into advertising where the gods determined I would fall among novelists and playwrights who would lead me to a place I could never have imagined. My most important workmate was a former schoolteacher, 32 years old, the father of six children, but an apprentice just as I was, still waiting for the day when his copy would be accepted by our boss. I drove Barry Oakley to work. He gave me Kerouac's Lonesome Traveler and other books he had reviewed, made sure that I saw Chekhov and Beckett and Ionesco, accompanied me to the first two art exhibitions of my life. It was lunchtime at the office when we boarded the tram to see The Ned Kelly Paintings 1946–47: Sidney Nolan at George's art gallery. I had no expectation of anything except the egg and lettuce sandwich waiting for me back at work, no idea that Nolan's Kelly paintings were about to burn into my brain and leave their mark for ever. It was 1963 and to quote One Hundred Years of Solitude, 'the world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point'. It was the year I discovered Ornette Coleman and Ingmar Bergman, Robbe-Grillet, Bob Dylan, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. I stumbled into James Joyce's Ulysses and – ignorant as I may have been – recognised a holy place, a blasphemous cathedral which had been banned, unbanned, banned again. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads These ecstatic moments are denied the old and wise, reserved for the very young who turn the pages of Ulysses and who can hardly believe that such a string of words exists: I cant help it if Im young still can I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my time living with him so cold never embracing me except sometimes when hes asleep the wrong end of me not knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a womans bottom. Are you allowed to say that? It was the year I read Allen Ginsberg's Howl and 'saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked'. I sought out Max Brown's Australian Son: The Story of Ned Kelly and it was here I found that Ned Kelly had also been a writer tortured by the cruelties of the British law. There were 56 pages and in every one he was on fire, enraged, breathless, a widow's son outlawed. Dear God, I thought, has no one ever really understood what Ned wrote before he robbed the bank at Jerilderie? Did no one see what I saw – that our famous bushranger was a raging poet? my mother and four or five men lagged innocent, and is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also who has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly, fat necked, wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped splay-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as officers of justice or Victorian police who some calls honest gentlemen (Ned Kelly – The Jerilderie Letter) I transcribed the letter and carried it on my person like the relic of a martyred saint. I knew (if no one else did) that I would be a writer and I would know how to do something with this letter when the time arrived. In 1964 I wrote my first unpublishable novel. In 1966 I tried again. So it went. Attempts. Failures. Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground. By 1974, when I finally became airborne, I had lost the Jerilderie Letter. Years passed. Three lives later I was living in New York City. It was 1993 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art was exhibiting the same Kelly paintings I had seen 30 years before. If I did not rush to see them it was because I was certain they could never dazzle the man as they had the callow boy. But my friend the Vassar professor was acting as a docent for the exhibition, and it was he who finally persuaded me to visit and then – dear Jesus – what wonders. I was amazed and proud, of us, of Ned, of Nolan, and I began taking my downtown friends uptown see the show. And as I circled the rooms telling the strange story to my victims, it struck me: I was going to write this bloody novel after all. Why write about Ned Kelly, said my old Sydney friend. We know all about him. And yes, we knew the police reports and the court transcripts. We knew the Land Acts and the day Ned fought Wild Wright. We knew Jerilderie, Euroa, Stringybark Creek and Constable Fitzpatrick. We knew the history all the way to the execution in Melbourne jail. But you cannot know a boy's soul from a police report. And Ned Kelly was a boy for most of his short life, and we – having the image of the bearded outlaw in our mind – hadn't spared a thought for that smooth-cheeked boy who loved his mother, lost his father to police, was apprenticed to a bushranger named Harry Power. I raided Ian Jones' Ned Kelly to find my story's spine but I also read obsessively around the subject. I visited Eleven Mile Creek, Benalla, Stringybark Creek, Greta, the first time with my dear friend Paul Priday and Sam, my 11-year-old son, the second time with the architect Richard Leplastrier and publisher Laurie Muller. Laurie was a horseman. Laurie taught me the landscape from a horseman's point of view, forced me to climb hills I would rather have ignored, sleep out in a swag on a rainy night when, honestly, I preferred a motel bed. The three of us visited Powers Lookout while hungover from duty-free Laphroaig, but not even alcohol poisoning could diminish Leplastrier's supreme visual intelligence. I made notes, saved a leaf at Stringybark Creek, composed an encyclopedia of smells. The book that finally emerged owes so much to Richard and Laurie, but also to my first 10 years of life in Bacchus Marsh, one hour's drive from Beveridge where Ned was born. It was just 60 years since Ned's departure when I arrived and you could hear the language of Ned's letter in the playground of State School #28. And it was that language that made me want to write True History of the Kelly Gang, to make a modern poetry from the voice of a hero who was condemned to death by the founder of State Library Victoria, the same institution that now holds his Jerilderie Letter, his armour and every word I wrote about his tragedy. All sorts of problems lay ahead of me, but I would never have a problem with the voice. It's easy to recognise a writer who's just come from their desk. You can see it in their haunted eyes, as if they're still living in another world. This manuscript is that world. It is where I lived a thousand days, always confident about the voice but, Lord … what was it really like to be an Irish immigrant a century ago? What was it like to be 16, locked inside a cell in Beechworth. What were the dimensions of the cell. Where was the shelf, the cruel unbending bed? What does a boy feel to have his father stolen from him, handcuffed to the stirrup iron of a policeman's mare. My notebooks are a mess of endless questions, inept drawings. What happens when Easter arrives in Australian autumn instead of Holy Irish spring? When the convicts were transported was the banshee left behind? For Ned to come alive I needed to think of things we had never thought before. That is the thrill and the terror of a writer's life, to walk out on the tightrope every day. The manuscript reveals none of this. If you read the bottom left-hand corner of the manuscript you will easily learn what words were printed on a given day. But there is nothing to show what words have been inserted, transposed, deleted, when the banshee crawled in from the dark. You could ask my computer if you had the skill, but the computer isn't talking and the only way to get the information is to read all 4,000 pages of the manuscript, not like you or I might read a finished book, but like a saint or mad person in a cell, someone with patience to annotate a river or a cloud. As it happens, my published novel imagines this very reader. Is it he or she or they? A librarian perhaps? It is a someone I invented, a someone who has collected Ned's scattered pages and collated them into 13 parcels. This has allowed me to map the passage of time, to add layers of information, and also – an important point – provide chapters for my readers. Of course my Ned was not thinking in terms of books or chapters. He had no time for commas and it is this that gives his voice an urgency and passion, never pausing when it would be grammatically correct to do so. 'This is a fabulous story,' my New York agent said, 'But you don't need to write it like this.' But I did need to write it just like that. And she was the excellent agent who had long ago introduced me to Gary Fisketjon (who published Cormac McCarthy) and who I knew would surely know how to read what I had written. I had never wished for line editing from anyone, but now I welcomed Gary's insistent questioning. Yes he was American and we can be amused that he queried the word mopoke. But he got the book, loved the book, never relented in his demand that it be as good as it could be, that the jacket be right, that the map be perfect. There was no escape from his passion. He tracked me down in Europe and spent five hours on the phone arguing about ampersands because he wanted posterity to fully understand that you knew what you were doing. He made lists for the foreign publishers and proofreaders who would publish later, just so they would understand that what might be an error in The Chicago Manual of Style was exactly what the author wished in print. Gary went out on a limb for that book, sold it to the sales force, the booksellers and anyone else who would listen to him. Finally I knew what writers mean when they say they were 'well published'. Some have questioned my title, but Gary never did. He trusted the book was what Ned named it, with a label declaring it was the true story of a widow's son who had been subject of perjury, false witness by the police and press. True History it must be and nothing less. This is an extract from State Library Victoria's exhibition Creative Acts: Artists and their Inspirations, on from 15 August 2025 to 31 May 2026
News.com.au
16-07-2025
- Science
- News.com.au
‘Stupidest thing': Scientist rips Elon Musk's Mars dream to shreds
Those who've chosen a career in science follow one rule: you need to doubt yourself. American astrophysicist and author Adam Becker says it's 'essential to the process', as told to Rolling Stone. After all, you can only start to understand the world if you hold the possibility that what you currently believe may be, well, wrong. It's a trait that Becker believes tech billionaires don't necessarily share. In this case, he's talking about SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and his plan to colonise Mars, which he labels as the 'stupidest thing' anyone can choose to do. 'What this sort of crystallised for me,' Becker said to Rolling Stone, 'was that these tech guys – who people think of knowing as a lot about science – actually, don't really know anything about science at all.' Elon Musk has positioned Mars as a lifeboat in the event that Earth suffers a catastrophic event that makes it no longer livable. The tech billionaire has boldly claimed a million people could live in a self-sustaining settlement, possibly comprising 'glass domes' on Mars in just 20 years. 'The important thing is that we build a self-sustaining city on Mars as quickly as possible,' Musk previously said during an interview with Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson on the Verdict with Ted Cruz podcast. 'The key threshold is when that city can continue to grow, continue to prosper, even when the supply ships from Earth stop coming at that point, even if something would happen on Earth. 'It might not be World War III – civilisation could die with a bang or a whimper.' He said it would take another decade and a half to make the planet sustainable for one million people to call it home, claiming, 'I think it can be done in 20 years'. It's a possibility that doesn't feel totally out of line with today's rapidly increasing innovation and technology. After all, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's space company, recently sent six women to space on its New Shepard rocket, including Katy Perry, who marks the world's first pop star to visit space. But Becker believes that even if Musk's theory of civilisation on Earth dying off, it still wouldn't make Mars a better option for humans to inhabit. 'Earth is always going to be a better option no matter what happens to Earth,' he said. 'Like, we could get hit with an asteroid the size of the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and Earth would still be more habitable. 'We could explode every single nuclear weapon, and Earth would still be more habitable. 'We could have the worst-case scenario for climate change, and Earth would still be more habitable. 'Any cursory examination of any of the facts about Mars makes it very clear.' Brutal. But while it sounds harsh, he's not the only person to voice criticism. Canadian-American theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss also believes that Musk may have his sights set a little too high when it comes to exploring life in space. 'What happens is, governments lead the way and then once we know how to do things, industry can generally improve upon it and do it cheaper and we'll see that,' he previously told 'I think the future of near-Earth exploration will be industry, but it gets so much more expensive and so much more dangerous. 'I think Elon is underestimating both of those, even though he's very ambitious and he's able to do things that they didn't think would be possible.' Starship tests have already been marred by two failures this year. In its latest attempt earlier this year in March, the uncrewed Starship spacecraft exploded minutes after taking off from Texas. Footage shared on social media shows debris from the rocket, which was on its eighth test flight, streaking across the sky near Florida and the Bahamas. 'During Starship's ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost,' SpaceX wrote on X. 'Our team immediately began co-ordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses. The company noted it would review the data from the test flight 'to better understand root cause'.
Forbes
29-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
3 Science-Backed Reasons Why We Need Leaders Who Doubt
To lead through complexity, we need leaders who are willing to question, listen, and adapt. Leaders ... More who doubt. In the movie Conclave, Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) delivers a homily to begin the ancient process of picking a new Pope. After a solemn Latin preamble, he speaks from the heart: 'There is one sin which I've come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.' He closes with a radical plea: 'Let us pray that God grants us a Pope who doubts.' It's a striking line—and a timely one. In a world teetering on the edge of political, technological, moral upheaval, it's no wonder we crave certainty. We long for clear answers, solid ground, and leaders who sound sure—even when the world is anything but. And yet, the ground keeps shifting. Employees report an 80% rise in uncertainty, losing nearly a full day of productivity each week to stress and anxiety. The cost to employers? A staggering $183 billion a year. At first glance, certainty seems like the obvious antidote. But here's the paradox: certainty isn't the opposite of uncertainty. Certainty is not clarity—it's often closure. It slams the door on new information, on nuance, on growth. What we need instead is doubt—not paralyzing and indecisive, but the thoughtful kind that invites reflection, openness, and the humility to revise our assumptions. False certainty is rigid, defensive, performative. It doesn't steady us, it narrows us. It creates the illusion of control while blinding us to complexity. And in a world this volatile, complexity is the only constant. To lead through complexity, we don't need louder voices, we need wiser ones. Leaders who are willing to question, listen, and adapt. Leaders who doubt. Here are three science-backed reasons why doubt isn't a leadership liability—it's an essential strength. German physicist Max Planck once famously quipped, 'Science advances one funeral at a time.' Even the brightest minds—including his own protégé, Albert Einstein—can become so attached to their theories that they resist new ideas. Ironically, Einstein himself dismissed scientific advances that grew out of his own theory of relativity. Innovation means being willing to let go of firmly-held beliefs long enough to try different ideas and consider discordant points of view. But that's hard—especially for experts. Research shows that the more experienced we are, the more cognitively entrenched we become. Expertise, while valuable, often narrows our thinking and reduces our mental flexibility. Certainty shrinks our peripheral vision. This rigidity is especially dangerous in times of radical change. Disruptive technologies require not just technical understanding but an open mind—especially when the disruption challenges something that doesn't seem broken. Consider Blackberry: once the gold standard of mobile devices, the company failed to anticipate and respond to the iPhone's seismic shift. Their success became their blind spot. They clung to what had always worked, confident that market dominance would protect them. But by the time they recognized the landscape had changed, it was too late. You can't embrace new ideas while clinging to the comfort of the status quo. In a world beset by misinformation, one-sided narratives and polarizing perspectives, doubt may be one of the most underrated leadership tools we have. Doubt invites us to examine our assumptions, question our mindsets, and interrogate our biases. It fuels a growth mindset—one that embraces the idea that we can adapt to change by learning new skills and embracing new insights. Research supports this. Studies on learning agility—the ability to draw on past experiences to navigate unfamiliar challenges and hold competing perspectives—show it's a powerful predictor of both current and future career success. Certainty, on the other hand, is the hallmark of a fixed mindset. It closes the mind, shutting down new opportunities. Certainty favors the obvious over the ambiguous. It also falsely protects the ego at the expense of curiosity. Our belief systems are deeply entangled with identity: the way we show up in the world, how we see ourselves and where we believe we belong. Neuroscience and behavioral research reveal that we often reject any evidence that threatens those beliefs—especially when they're shared by the groups we belong to and identify with. This leaves us prone to closed-mindedness and intolerance. Known as 'motivated reasoning,' this cognitive reflex doesn't just preserve bias, it forecloses learning. To counteract it, leaders must cultivate intellectual humility and cognitive flexibility. That means seeking out dissonant perspectives, asking more questions, and challenging our own assumptions—especially when we feel most certain. It's easy to be open-minded when the stakes are low. But in a volatile world, when the stakes are high, doubt becomes essential—not a weakness, but a discipline. Leadership rarely gets easier with altitude. The higher you climb, the harder it is to get unfiltered feedback and the unvarnished truth. With limited access to candid input and incomplete data, even the most educated and experienced leaders are vulnerable to confirmation bias. One study found that psychologists are over 77% more likely to seek information that supports an initial diagnosis rather than explore conflicting evidence. Why? Because confirmation bias creates the illusion of stability. It allows us to make faster decisions based on what we already believe—offering comfort, but at the cost of clarity. It narrows our field of vision and stifles our ability to reconcile competing data. And too often, these fast decisions miss the mark. Even when we try to stay objective, certainty clouds our judgment. Nobel Prize-winning research on prospect theory shows that in high-risk or complex situations, we use mental shortcuts—quick rules for sorting information and estimating outcomes. Instead of weighing real probabilities, we make decisions based on the outcomes we hope for. We prioritize minimizing losses over maximizing gains. In short: we choose the safer bet, not the smarter one. Kodak offers a textbook example. In the 1970s, one of its own engineers invented the digital camera. But rather than embrace the breakthrough, Kodak treated it as a modest extension of their photo printing business. They feared that going digital would cannibalize their lucrative film sales. That fear—rooted in certainty about what had always worked—led them to dismiss the very future they had pioneered. While competitors rushed forward, Kodak stood still. In times of rapid change, the cost of certainty is missed opportunity. Theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote, 'Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards.' The future is never predictable. And the pursuit of certainty—while comforting—often tethers us to the past: to familiar patterns, outdated assumptions, and habits that no longer serve the world we're trying to lead. You don't have to be a Pope to feel the pull of certainty. But in today's world, none of us has the luxury of digging in our heels. Leadership demands a different kind of strength: the courage to sit with contradiction, to weigh competing truths, and to resist the rush to resolution. In tumultuous times, we don't need leaders with all the answers, we need leaders willing to continually question. May we all have the courage to become leaders who doubt.
