VUCA

"I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise, or wealth to the brilliant, or favour to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all" (Ecclesiastes 9:11)

Why do good things happen to bad people? Underpinning this thought is a causal relationship between who one is (i.e., "good" or "bad") and what one should receive (i.e., "good things" or "bad things"). Growing up in a Western context, I bought into this causal relationship and was perplexed when I heard stories of people who treat others terribly yet are financially successful, or someone dying of lung cancer although they never smoked. These anecdotes did not fit my world view of cause and effect, of doing X and receiving Y.

I believed this about the world because I was a LAMO. That is, I perceived - like many others - that life was Linear (i.e., progressing sequentially from one stage to another), Anthropocentric (i.e., humans are the most important thing in the universe), Mechanistic (i.e., the whole is the sum of its parts), and Ordered (i.e., things follow clear rules). It's much easier for our minds to think in concrete, black and white terms that puts us at the center and provides a logical progression through life. And so, the assumption that there are "good" and "bad" people fits nicely in this way of thinking. It is not a continuous variable that falls on a spectrum of someone being good some of the time and bad at other times, it sums people up in a global context as being either good or bad, leaving very little room for nuance.

Along a similar vein, I perceived there were "objectively" good (e.g., financial gain, health, loving relationships, etc.) and bad (e.g., suffering, loss, illness) events that happen to people. These events can be categorized into positive and negative outcomes such as feeling good, being able to purchase more things, feeling sad about the loss of someone, etc., that typically only touch upon the first order effects. First order effects are the initial outcomes of an event - the gain or the loss - whereas every event has a ripple effect of second or third order effects that may be "good" or "bad". Consider for a moment that you won the lottery, which I can say with confidence that most people would agree is a good thing. However, there are many stories of lottery winners wishing they had never won because of how drastically it worsened their lives. A seemingly positive event that most people objectively agree upon (clearly, no one would spend their money at a chance of being miserable) has a ripple effect of positive and negative, second/third order effects that we often don't consider when we first think of buying the lottery ticket. Life is not LAMO, it's VUCA.

VUCA means Volatile (i.e., liable to change quickly), Uncertain (i.e., unknown or indefinite), Complex (i.e., many interconnected parts), and Ambiguous (i.e., unclear or open to interpretation). Life is full of unknown, interconnected variables that create complex systems that are hard to discern. And these systems

create feedback loops that excite or inhibit other systems, in an never ending ripple of complex causes and effects.

But thinking in VUCA is often difficult for people to do. One reason why it might be difficult is due to the structure of our cognition and how we perceive the world. Our brain tries to fit stimuli into discrete categories for us to quickly make sense of what it is, which gives rise to dichotomous thinking. When stimuli are ambiguous or complex, it takes more brain power for us to process it. Holding contradictions or uncertainties in our minds can create cognitive dissonance, which is a state of psychological discomfort that many people do not like to stay in. So meeting someone who is pro-choice and pro-guns, creates a contradiction in our minds because we have a perception of what attributes typically go along with those two belief systems and often they are on opposing sides. We try to simplify people into clear cut boundaries so we do not have to confront the deep thinking it takes to understand the nuances within everyone. We forget that people are complex, they hold many thoughts and feelings that do not align with each other.

Another aspect may be the perceived control we have over our lives (as William Ernest Henley so aptly put it "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul") and living in a VUCA world means it's difficult to control your fate. To try and regain control over life we engage in behaviours and thoughts that provide us with comfort that life is LAMO. Whether it is believing in a higher power that provides some explanation for VUCA (e.g., "everything happens for a reason), or looking at the weather network to predict the future, we try and reduce the variability in life to create some sense of control over it. Acknowledging that the world is VUCA is also acknowledging that we have very little control in the events that happen in our lives, which I would contend many people do not want to believe.

So what do I takeaway from life being VUCA? When I was younger and I thought in more cause and effect, black and white terms, this gave rise to being more judgmental about people's actions. I missed a lot of the nuance or understanding of life and was quick to sum people up with a global category. Grappling with the reality that life is VUCA, that it's a complex, beautiful dance filled with perspective and relativities, has given me more understanding as a person. If someone does something I perceive as wrong or harmful, I try to view the world from their lens and consider what might be driving that behaviour before assigning them a label (see my podcast for further understanding on this concept). I also try to consider the ripple effect of events and take every situation as a "maybe this will be positive or negative" (much to the annoyance of my partner) instead of a definitive good or bad. Time often reveals what the true impact of a situation is, so I try not to get lost in the forest. Holding these thoughts and keeping these perspectives is difficult and I often fall short, but I use it as a guiding principle to leading a better, more understanding life.

Time and chance happen to us all.