No one wishes to be in a situation where things are not certain. Uncertainty is a circumstance in which there is doubt. Anything undesirable can happen out of nowhere creating obstacles or hindering to people to undertake their day-to-day work steadily and smoothly. Uncertainty has the power to cause unreliability and it is impossible to do anything thing in such circumstance confidently.
The term risk can be used to describe two separate and interrelated aspects of uncertainty – the threat it poses to individuals and groups, and the strategies used to manage these threats. The use of risk to describe the threat of undesirable outcomes is evident in the use of the term risk. People often use the terms ‘risk’ and ‘worry’ interchangeably. They incline to worry about threats to health, especially their own, threats to their family. Furthermore, uncertainty entails threats from broader circumstance, including crime, drug using, anti-social behavior and disrespect amongst youth. The interplay between risk anxieties, media narratives and sensibilities and reflexivity among individuals in their own experiences of risk becomes evident.
In contrast, individuals amidst uncertainty may be faced with unfamiliar, threatening situations: moments where the outcome is both important and uncertain. Such fateful moments involve crucial events and decisions that will shape a person’s future life, when the he stands at the crossroads of his existence. Uncertainty in such situation becomes fair and square.
Unprecedented uncertainty may be experienced as threatening and psychologically shocking when there is no warning. The event is sudden and catastrophic. When the events involve a large number of people and are represented in and reproduced by the media, the shock may be felt nationally or even globally. Such events undermine the continuity of everyday life and puncture the protective cocoon that usually filters out possible dangers. Thus, it stages a challenge to the routines of daily activities or to more far-reaching ambitions. Uncertainty touches every sphere of life; for instance, individuals who experience serious and especially sudden illness such as a stroke undergo much disruption of their expectations and the associated negative outcomes. Most stroke survivors describe the onset of the stroke as sudden, unexpected and shocking. Threats to individuals and groups do not have to be immediate and experienced; they can be more distant and imagined. In times of uncertainty, the fear of a given risk travels in a manner which mimics viral transmission of disease. And analysis of individual responses to this fear again echoes fear of pollution and contamination amongst social groups.
Threats caused by uncertain situation focus on worry about diseases such as HIV/AIDS amongst some communities, where there is widespread reporting of ‘dangerous’ behaviors such as having multiple partners, concurrency, sexual mixing and not using condoms. In this situation, men often do not worry about which of their own sexual behaviors are potentially dangerous but women worry about the sexual behavior of their partners.
While some individuals may worry about sexually transmitted disease, still they have other concerns and these may be more important. In particular, they are concerned about maintaining ‘romantic’ relationships with their partners based on a trust and intimacy. But both reveal that the concepts of trust and techniques of harboring intimacy are used to manage and express fear. Concepts of sensing risk and attributing blame to ‘others’, and the behaviors of intimacy and trust are employed to demarcate the boundary between self, stranger and trusted intimate partner. Probably when uncertainty reigns, trust can be both a technique for managing risk, and a response to how others are perceived to manage risk on the individual’s behalf. Trust in contrast is embedded in personal relations and communications. For instance, the public health workers advise that individuals should protect themselves against sexually transmitted disease. The protection is through ‘safe sex’, particularly through the use of condoms which is likely to have limited impact. Rather they seek an intimate and trusting relationship and not using protective devices. Individuals consider sex to be ‘safe’ when they trust their partner. Sex, for instance, in a loving relationship can be safe even if condoms are not used. It is safe so long as you trust your partner.
Worry, the result of uncertainty, can be managed in a very different way, through distrust and the use of space to avoid the distrusted. Those individuals, and the places where they might be encountered, were likely to be avoided. The three social distancing strategies are presumably avoidance, surveillance and fortification. This explains much of the harmful effect of the lack of confidence in what goes on around. Isolation in this case also represents a mechanism used by people to protect themselves from the dangers they believe to be lurking in their immediate physical and social environment. The distrust experienced by individuals living in a deprived locality is the most unbearable situation. In such strategy, individuals who live in the neighborhood worry about isolation and recognize the negative effects which it has on their mental health. Yet, the avoidance of dangerous individuals and places often acts to increase their own isolation. Uncertainty has its own negative effect on members of different age groups with different lifestyle. For instance young men on a deprived housing estate, identify a combination of trust and distrust. The young men feel safe with their own peers who share their lifestyle, for example use ‘soft drugs’ such as alcohol and cannabis but distrusted individuals and groups with different lifestyles and values; for example those who inject heroin, and policemen who come from outside their area.
On a different level, uncertainty is a key feature affecting the local investment climate. It is the issue Ethiopia is decidedly fighting to make a stop to it and assuring firms and entrepreneurs to consider and decide to start, expand, or contract their businesses for their benefit and the development of their country. Even though uncertainty is quite salient in cases in which firms and politicians are directly connected and political favors might be at play. Everything possible is being done to put the situation under control. This project should aims to disentangle the mechanisms of uncertainty and political connections in determining firms’ dynamics and their strategic decisions during electoral period to save the country from economic collapse.
Understanding the consequences that high uncertainty can have for local economies in developing countries is the key for policymakers, especially during elections. Likewise, understanding the role of political finance is now crucial as part of the democratization process.
While uncertainty may be ubiquitous and growing in contemporary society, it should not be seen as synonymous with risk.
Large bureaucratic organizations may seek to control uncertainty through measurement and calculation. However, in everyday life, individuals do not have the time, resources and the inclination to use such approaches. Indeed the use of explicit measures to protect oneself, as in safe sex, may create other threats, for example undermining an intimate romantic relationship. While uncertainty may be ubiquitous and growing in contemporary society, it should not be seen as synonymous with risk.
Then, what should be done about uncertainty? Evidently, life is filled with it and worries about the future. While many things remain outside your control, your mindset should be the key to coping with difficult circumstances and confidently facing the unknown. What might that be? I leave that to my audience.
BY JOSEPH SOBOKA
The Ethiopian Herald May 18/2021
