The Importance of Ambiguity

In an era of yes or no, on or off, GOP or Dem., we have become accustomed to, and nearly dependent upon, predictable things, easy-to-categorize things, and easy-to-stereotype things. We ask for and expect unambiguous answers to even malformed questions and value words with a single, concise meaning. And while clarity and efficiency has become the foundation of our information-driven world, we should not forget the importance of the ambiguous things, the cloudy, amorphous things like Tori Amos lyrics or Kafkan parables that let the imagination play and hope wander. In fact, I would submit that ambiguity and the quest to resolve it is an essential part of what differentiates us from animals. We once thought language separated us, but we are slowly discovering that some animals, too, have complex language. We only seem to surpass animals' curiosity, imagination, and technical ability by simple measures of degree. What we do that animals don't appear to is wrestle over the existence of the afterlife or the distinction between good and evil. Religion, philosophy, and ethics are entire disciplines devoted to the study of the ambiguous.

I work in IT and it is my job to be exacting and precise. I deal with hundreds of billions of discrete bits of information that must be exactly transformed into meaningful information. There is no room for uncertainty, but that is why I’m rapt by the worlds of art, music, and nature. Nothing ever has to make exact sense. Indeed, the most valuable examples of art, music, and nature are those that make almost no initial sense at all. When is something alive and when is something dead? What did Bob Marley really mean in his immortal lyric, "No woman, no cry?" These kinds of things truly make life as a human being worth living. It's within these vague oceans between definite shores that the beauty of human nature shines through and magic happens. Here are a few reasons why.

Ambiguity compels creativity in a way that nothing else does. Take T.S. Elliot's opening line in his epic poem "The Wasteland": "April is the cruelest month." He could have written, "Spring is the most depressing time for a humankind so alienated from itself and lacking of life." Instead, the poet veiled his meaning behind a hazy phrase to challenge us to work for his meaning. If we accept the challenge, we plunge into a white squall of creation: Our imagination begins to work, chewing on any morsel of information given, trying to pull out the flavor and discover what is at its heart. (How can a month be cruel? And why April?) We flex our ingenuity, exploring all possible interpretations of the message to arrive at some kind of basic understanding. (April is the start of Spring. Spring is the season of rebirth. Rebirth can be cruel to a society that is dead. Why is this society dead?) This search quickly becomes cathartic and downright philosophical.

But don't think that this kind of search and discovery, compelled by ambiguity, is only found in high brow art and literature. The major religious texts of the world are fraught with implied mantras and contradictory teachings—especially within themselves—enough so to fuel millennia of conflict among sects claiming to have the one true interpretation. But how can that be if they all differ, despite being based on the very same writings? I would argue that the reason religious texts, and the religions that interpret them, remain alive and a conscious part of contemporary debate is because of their ambiguous nature. Nothing is more potent in sparking attention than controversy, and nothing sparks controversy like statements that have not or cannot been proven either true or false; does life really begin at conception? Which god is the one true god? Ambiguity is the puzzle of two watches that tell different times. And it is this kind of uncertainty that fuels human existence and the human experience.

Another magical thing that ambiguity can offer is the deepest possible insights into truth. Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, Inc, tells his customers, "The more you know, the less you need." It's a simple, elegant truth that many of us have no doubt witnessed and can relate to. But how can that be if no direct mention is made of what is less needed? Therein lies the magic. Yvon trusts you to figure it out for yourself. First, your mind cycles through some possible answers; "The more you know," the less time you need; "The more you know," the less energy you need; the less materials you need, the less support you need; and so on, until you suddenly realize that all of those possibilities are equally true, all at once. Yvon's phrase is able to capture all of those truths in a single, stand-alone truth because he never actually mentions any of the possibilities. He simply leaves it up to you to figure it out. And now that you have, there is no more potent way to believe in the truth of something than to feel like you discovered it for yourself. How wonderful is that?

To try to describe to you all of ambiguity's fantastic figments would be like trying to describe the end of eternity. Even writing this essay has been an exercise in chiseling out something that is, by its very nature, hard to define. But there is one more facet of ambiguity that I'd like to offer up for consideration: The uncovering of truth and tendency about a person. How do you interpret A Clockwork Orange? What do you see in that ink splotch? What is your definition of love? What is your spouse's? There are no right answers to these questions, but there certainly are a lot of revealing ones.

Ambiguity spans the abyss between left and right, where "maybe" and "sort of" are often the most precise answers, but where "What do you think?" is uncertainly the best. Within that ephemeral region of question and curiosity, of impetus, lives the courage to not know something for certain. It is only there, in that nebulous space, that we thrive as humans, at the fringes of truth and revelation, as the great diviners of our own destiny. For without ambiguity, we would be relegated to the mechanized perpetuity of the easy-to-predict, and forget to face that which is even more frightening than the unknown—that which we may never know for sure. Because to face uncertain doubt gets at the very core of what drives our highly controversial existence. Know what I mean?

Side note: This essay was originally written for submission to NPR.org's This I Believe segment, but I wasn't able to get it to down to the 500 requisite words. So here it is in its entirety.