The Year Ahead: Uncertainty and Foreboding
I’m publishing this series of articles to share and discuss my ruminations on coping with a troubled and messy world. You can “follow” me to never miss an article.
In talking with a good friend about the coming year, it quickly became clear that we were both equally gripped by the same ominous feeling. We are deeply uncertain as to how it will turn out. We feel a deep sense of uncertainty and foreboding. In short, we’re constantly walking on eggshells.
Thus, with the Republican takeover of the House, will it inevitably lead to more and more chaos? Will the Divisiveness and intense Polarization over everything continue, and worse, spiral out of control? Such fears are real indeed. They can’t even agree to elect one of their own as Speaker.
Will poll workers and Politicians continue to come under attack, thereby receiving more death threats, and subject to increasing acts of violence?
Will new variants of Covid continue to appear? Will it be worse than the Flu requiring boosters not just once a year, but throughout?
Will the Abortion wars become even more heated and end in violence?
And then there’s always the imminent Threat of Guns. Thus, recently, a man was arrested for carrying six guns, one of which was a AR-15 style rifle, into a supermarket in Atlanta[i]. While Georgia is an Open-Carry State, which means any lawfully owned Gun can be carried in most public places, does it mean that someone wearing body armor and carrying an assault rifle should be allowed to parade about freely? While Gun advocates may believe he had the right to do so and therefore don’t see his actions as “reckless,” I certainly do. It scares the living you know what out of me!
Walking on eggs doesn’t begin to capture how I feel.
On the positive side, my wife and I relish being with our family more than ever. At the same time, we worry that like so many of us, we are turning inward more and more to shut out as much as possible the awfulness of the outside world.
[i] Richard Fausset, “His 6 Guns Scared Shoppers. But Did He Break Any Laws?”, The New York Times, Tuesday, January 3, 2023, PP. A1 and A10.
Ian I. Mitroff is credited as being one of the principal founders of the modern field of Crisis Management. He has a BS, MS, and a PhD in Engineering and the Philosophy of Social Systems Science from UC Berkeley. He Is Professor Emeritus from the Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. Currently, he is a Senior Research Affiliate in the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, UC Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Management. He has published 41 books. His latest is: The Socially Responsible Organization: Lessons from Covid, Springer, New York, 2022.
Photo by Dylan Sauerwein on Unsplash
