Actually, the unplannability of a certain event is something quite natural, because that’s how the world works. How do I come to such a statement? By observation.
Supposedly safe plans are disturbed, distracted or prevented by “accidental” events. This is the basis of innumerable criminal stories, but also of many small and large events in everyday life, at work and in living together.
It also seems to be the case that more complex systems like to fail at some unexpected point. This forces us to tests and experimental series, to field experiments and group studies, i.e. to observation.
So what are coincidences? Are coincidences, as we like to believe, simply causal chains, which would mean that we can trace each occurred coincidence back to a cause and thus eradicate it? If that were so, then we could predict the motion of a simple tripartite pendulum, but we cannot. What we call chaos is nothing more than the unpredictability of certainties.
In quantum physics it is therefore already by definition never about certainties, but only about possibilities and their condensation into a state by the collapse of the possibilities of other states.
Why do we have such a hard time with this simple realization?
As biological beings, we tend to “simplify” our lives. The bio-logic in this is the efficient use of the available resources. We humans are equally warm, i.e. forced to keep our body temperature within narrow limits under all circumstances; a few degrees decide over life and death. Our biological processes are therefore energy-saving from the point of view of energy efficiency in many places and at most times. This is achieved by the best possible utilization of food, cooling and heating mechanisms, biochemical optimization and good temperature distribution even in the most remote parts of the body. Large energy consumers, such as the brain, are supplied with massive veins. So that we do not have to continuously supply ourselves with food, we save energy. Active thinking processes, such as learning or grasping new structures, consume massive amounts of energy. We know this because the body reacts here with exhaustion after some time, just as it does during athletic activity. To save energy in our thinking we form patterns, rules, association links. Learned things don’t have to be re-learned continuously, but the learned impression is deepened and thus achievable with less energy.
This also explains that we do not like to think in fluid states.Subject/object relations, which can’t exist at all, because every observation changes the observed “object”, are so simple, so energetically pleasant.One can separate oneself from other things and people, the glass is on the table and I sit in front of it.It feels good, it is not exhausting.But unfortunately it is not right either, it is just a consequence of bio-logic.
One is always part of the whole and everyone is in the center. This is not meant in a platitudinous way, but with depth.Artists cope well with this because we have acquired the ability to resist this energy-saving pattern formation, which is why it is so exhausting to be artistically active, as long as you do it with depth.
So if I live in a filter bubble and don’t make an active effort to soften it, I’m more likely to believe simple solutions to problems because I don’t recognize the complexity of the problems and mechanisms of action, mostly global.
And it feels stupidly good to be validated and not have to struggle to find explanations myself.
The entire universe acts on a pencil balancing on its tip.
In which direction it will tip over is decided not only by the breeze of the open window, the slight tremor caused by cars on the street next door or the passing moon.No also the sun and the next galaxy and all other galaxies of the universe. Of course in their own strengths, but it is indisputable that all work.
So everything works on everything, everyone is connected with everyone.In the small we experience this today in the globalization, the species extinction, the financial market, the climate change.
If you strike a tuning fork and hold it close to a second tuning fork of the same pitch, then the latter is excited without touching it and resonates.Resonances occur even over great distances and can trigger visible, perceptible or foreboding effects. The glass shatters, the bridge collapses or the trumpets of Jericho bring down a city wall.
And then there is entanglement: the connectedness of things that are physically separate.
Proven in quantum physics, entanglement is a bizarre phenomenon that leads to long-distance action without time delay.
And if we are already with the quantum physics, then the superposition of the smallest components of our “construction kit” of everything must not be missing. It says that in principle there are always all possibilities and these crystallize out by external circumstances, for example by observation, only into one single possibility.
But if everything is so indeterminable and overflowing with possibilities, what do we do to be able to plan?
Here’s a solution:
We take the path that is most plausible to us at the moment, and we are vigilant.We tell everyone we want to reach a goal, but the path to it, or that we’ll reach it completely, or whether we’ll still care when we get close to it, we can’t guarantee,
We can only set out on the path and, if necessary, evade it or even turn back.And this must be a sign of leadership quality and not a sign of weakness.Turning back at the right time is forward-looking and the right way to go.
Populists like the infantile Donald Trump, the ultra right wing AFD party in Germany fight viciously for seemingly simple solutions (nuke them, kill them, jail them, exclude them, defame them) to solve complex problems, historically seen this always(!) leads into new problems and not out of them. Even worse, their “solutions” end with the high probability known to us in catastrophic collapses like war in societies, insolvencies of whole market segments, desolation of diversity.
Treading the path, describing the way and preparing everyone for the fact that tomorrow everything can be completely different, with a flexible, adaptable structure and the common will can immediately realign the direction of the path and not go over the cliff like lemmings. Sticking to the path has never brought anything sustainable, see coal phase-out, department store subsidies, supporting the automotive and other innovation-poor industries, financing the pension system through wage labor while unemployment rates rise and society ages, full employment and much more.
The inflammatory and headline media drive politicians like pigs through the village when they prove them to be doing something different than postulated times ago. In the process, the ever-changing landscape is deliberately swept under the table in a polemical manner.
We have to change our attitude: it is good if someone reorients himself, because planning can never be certain and the complex world is constantly changing.
There is no certainty of decision, of path, of outcome.