Resilience Revisited 011: Resilience as 'Capacity to Embrace Uncertainty’

Resilience Revisited is an occasional blog series reflecting on the need for a deeper understanding of the concept of resilience, one that inspires an exploration of its complexities and a conscious, intentional shift towards achieving strong resilience – and sustainability – individually and collectively.? It is a way of articulating my thoughts on my PhD journey. Whilst it is my primary authorship, it comes from the synthesis of many thought contributions for which I am immensely grateful.

This post comes after a month of many conversations on (un)certainty, preparedness, response and risk. I am reminded of the life lessons of the bridge to nowhere and some of our #OpenDialogues including the conversation with William Rees on #CognitiveObsolescence. This musing is trying to 'organise' some of that thinking - critiques, comments, alternative views all welcome! Thank you most especially in this first formulation to Gerard ("Gerry") Salole Mike Freedman Indy Johar Laurie Laybourn Elizabeth Sawin Cindy-Lee Cloete Erika Gregory Dorothy Francis Kirsten Dunlop Lucy Bernholz Hanna St?hle Barry Knight

For centuries, we've believed that with enough knowledge and technology, humanity could master nature. Our worldview positions certainty (confidence in ‘knowing’ what to expect) and preparedness (capacity to respond with minimal ‘casualty’) as natural allies, shaping everything from economic systems to emergency responses. However, in our age of Polycrisis, this foundational construct is unravelling. Climate change, political instability, pandemics, and economic upheaval reveal not just the limitations of our assumed control but the necessity of embracing unresolved tension. Nature's complex interconnections demonstrate that our efforts to impose order are often directly linked to the cascading challenges we now face.

The Certainty-Preparedness Challenge

At the heart of our current predicament lies a profound tension between certainty and preparedness. Our traditional approaches assumed these qualities were complementary—that greater certainty led naturally to better preparation. But the polycrisis has revealed a more complex reality: our pursuit of certainty often undermines true preparedness; our most effective responses might require embracing uncertainty.* This tension isn't a problem to be solved but a dynamic to be engaged.

To understand how this tension manifests and how we might better engage with it, we can map how organisations and societies respond to increasing complexity. This reveals not just where we've been and where we are but illuminates possible paths forward.

Mapping Our Response to Complexity

This framework suggests four distinct positions, each telling a different story about our relationship with certainty and preparedness:

Historical Position: "Always Prepared"

For generations, we have operated from a position of assumed mastery, where certainty and preparedness seemed naturally aligned. We built vast systems of control and prediction, creating protocols and hierarchies that promised safety through dominion over nature. This worldview shaped our institutions, education systems, and responses to challenges. When disasters struck, we had clear chains of command, predetermined responses, and a deep conviction that with enough planning, we could manage any crisis. This position served us in a world of more bounded, predictable challenges—but the polycrisis reveals its limitations.

Resistance to Change: Outdated Models

As complexity increases, some institutions respond by doubling down on traditional approaches. Like a person clinging for control, gripping the wheel harder in dangerous conditions, they intensify their commitment to outdated mental models:

• Meetings become more frequent but less effective.
• Protocols multiply but fail to address emerging challenges.
• Resources pour into maintaining control structures that yield diminishing returns.
• Decision-making becomes more centralised just as distributed intelligence is most needed. This response reflects a desperate attempt to maintain certainty at the cost of actual preparedness, consuming enormous energy while failing to address root challenges.

System Overwhelm: Cognitive Gap

Some may find themselves overwhelmed, even paralysed, as they recognise the full scope of our challenges. This position emerges as we confront complexity that exceeds our traditional mental models:**

• Analysis becomes endless but fails to produce action.
• Every solution seems inadequate to the scale of the challenge.
• Awareness of interconnected problems leads to decision paralysis.
• The gap between understanding and capacity creates institutional freeze. This response acknowledges uncertainty but loses preparedness, trapped in a state of knowing too much to continue as before but lacking new tools for moving forward.

Creative Engagement: Dynamic Integration

A new position is emerging that transforms our relationship with both certainty and preparedness. Rather than fighting uncertainty or becoming paralysed by it, this approach actively engages with emerging reality:

• Distributed networks sense and respond to changing conditions.
• Learning happens continuously at multiple scales.
• Resources flow toward effective responses rather than control maintenance.
• Collective intelligence emerges through active participation in complexity. This isn't a fixed position but a dynamic state of continuous adaptation, where preparedness comes not from rigid control but from enhanced capability to engage with uncertainty.

Redefining Resilience: The Capacity to Contain Unresolved Tension

Resilience emerges not from resolving uncertainty but developing muscles to contain its tensions.

This tension between certainty and preparedness calls us to fundamentally reconsider resilience. Rather than seeing it as a fixed state of readiness, resilience becomes "the capacity of individuals and systems to engage in continuous collective transformation through both perseverance and purposeful withdrawal." This definition acknowledges that true preparedness emerges not from controlling uncertainty but from actively engaging with it.

This new understanding transforms how we view strength and preparedness:

• Flowing with change rather than controlling it
• Dynamic navigation rather than static readiness
• Collective adaptation rather than centralised command and control
• Active engagement with, rather than reactive efforts at resolution of, tensions

When Control Models Fail: Recent Examples

Two recent disasters illustrate the consequences of clinging to outdated mental models:

The Los Angeles Fires (January 2025) revealed how quickly assumed stability can unravel:

• NASA scientist Peter Kalmus relocated his family years before, recognising traditional safety assumptions no longer held
• The destruction came "ahead of schedule," outpacing scientific predictions
• Traditional "safe" urban areas proved vulnerable as climate impacts accelerated
• An entire community transformed into what Kalmus describes as "a hellscape"

The Valencia Floods (October 2024) demonstrated the failure of centralised control:

• Officials delayed warnings despite advanced meteorological systems
• Urban development had ignored local knowledge about river patterns
• The Japanese embassy warned its citizens while local authorities delayed action
• Community response emerged when centralized systems failed

Three Essential Shifts

These disasters reveal three fundamental transformations required for true resilience:

1. Prediction to Absorption

• Technical knowledge exists but fails to translate into action
• Change consistently outpaces models and expectations

2. Centralized to Distributed

• Communities develop new resilience when conventional systems fail
• Networks outperform command chains

3. Safety to Adaptive Capacity Success requires:

• Sensing and responding to emerging patterns
• Transforming while maintaining core functions
• Balancing persistence with purposeful withdrawal
• Fostering collective over centralized intelligence

A New Story of Resilience

The Polycrisis isn't just revealing the limitations of our control systems—it's unravelling a foundational assumption: that certainty and preparedness are two sides of the same coin. Our collective future depends on developing our capacity for creative engagement with emerging reality. Our task is not to perfect our mechanisms of control—which are themselves linked to our current crises—but to develop our willingness to participate, collectively, in the dynamic living systems that sustain us all.

Perhaps true resilience emerges when we stop asking "How certain are we?" and start asking "How adaptively can we respond?"

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* See Resilience Revisited 07: The Janus Faces of Resilience

** See Resilience Revisited 05: Cognitive Obsolescence

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