CERTAINTY HOLDER: Prozac for Humanity
A Certainty Holder is a figure, role, or concept created by people to decrease their fear of uncertainty and gain (an illusion of) control by proxy.
It can be a god, an idea (as karma), or any person in a position of power who “truly knows” how things are and can affect them. To succeed, one must be loyal to this Holder and do what He or His priests prescribe.
The Certainty Holder does not exist without and is always a part of a narrative. Depending on the time spent on its development and the creativity of developers, the narrative can be more or less elaborated.
An example of an existential narrative is frequent among religions. The Holder is divine; It knows everything and usually has a plan (The Plan), yet people cannot comprehend it. Moreover, one should not even try, as it is a symptom of corruption, pride, heresy, blasphemy, etc. Nonetheless, one must follow certain routines—prayers, fastings, and other self-restraints—to increase chances in this life and score points for the one after—an essential part of the narrative.
Practicing certain prescribed routines, we either affect (the purpose of sacrificing) or humbly attract the attention (with prayers, fasting, etc.) of the Certainty Holder, thus reducing our fear of uncertainty.
Totalitarian societies have their narratives and their Certainty Holders. An example of a less developed yet still bloody narrative in contemporary politics is the one built around Putin and his war.
In this narrative, Putin has some “plan” that, had all the citizens known, they would have understood the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine. Yet, the information constituting the plan is super sensitive, and enemies everywhere are trying to find it out, so lay people cannot access all of it, but they must believe and act as told. Thus, when told to kill or die, they must do it, and this is their actual goal in life, contrary to living for individual happiness. Compare it to traditional religious narratives.
A sincere belief in the existence of a Certainty Holder, his priests, and the narrative always (sic!) implies a particular worldview in the believer and a specific evaluation of oneself. Thus, an easy switch to believing in another Certainty Holder is possible and likely. An enthusiastic persecutor becomes a passionate apostle, and an outwardly atheist society converts to religious fundamentalism as if by magic. Moreover, like many robust things, Certainty Holder is also a scalable phenomenon: God in the sky and a king on a throne are self-similar.
Why is this important for work? Because irrationality can efficiently poison work.
If you do not understand something concerning your work—an endpoint, procedures, decisions, etc.—you decrease the uncertainty by communicating and getting answers.
Yet, if you ask relevant questions and instead of rational responses helping you understand, you get weird facial expressions and explanations that hint at your inability to understand the hidden underpinnings, treat it as a red flag.
{RED FLAGS, GAUGING EMOTIONS, TRUST, INFORMATION ASYMMETRY, COMPARTMENTALIZATION, WHO AM I?}