Tolerance of ambiguity
Tolerance of ambiguity is the ability to perceive and bear ambiguity and uncertainty. People who have it are slower to close an open situation and stay in conversation with others, even when their view is uncomfortable. It is a foundation for working with futures, because several developments remain conceivable at once. The ability can be practised.
After the first third, Christopher Nolan’s film “Tenet” turns everything seen so far upside down, and for a few minutes viewers have no chance of understanding what is happening. The image comes from “Auf ein Wort #1”, the first text in the series on Einbildungskanal, in which Jonas Drechsel described the term in 2021. For him, tolerance of ambiguity belongs with utopias that show their downsides and with decisions made on the principle “good enough for now, safe enough to try”.
Else Frenkel-Brunswik coined the term in 1949, at the time as a fixed personality trait. Ursula K. Le Guin gave her novel “The Dispossessed” the subtitle “An Ambiguous Utopia”.
Guiding questions
- Where do you close an open question too early?
- Which view in the room are you finding hard to bear right now?