Embracing Uncertainties

Seductive, uninspired uncertainties
appeal to us when we are older,
rejecting youthful bargains, made when bolder,
not overweighed by logic in our youth
when we believed all problems could be solved
by Q.E.D.’s that demonstrated truth,
and every ambiguity dissolved,
and problems of solutions were exempt,
and thanks to logic that was hazy,
wed youthfully with certitude attempt
to solve our problems in ways that were crazy.

When we grow old we have a different vision,
and embrace the realm of the absurd,
responding to all doubt with imprecision,
acknowledging that when young we had erred.

A famous unobservant Jew, Ben-Gurion, once stated

  that in Israel you can be no realist

if
you don’t believe in miracles, and Israel’s

  success
proves that his statement was as true empirically

  no less
than do uncertainties to anyone

  who has been hanging dangerously

over any cliff.

In “What’s Wrong with the Postmodern Military? After fifteen months of war, and brilliant Israeli operations, Hamas and Hizballah have managed to avoid total defeat, and the IDF has not yet managed to secure total victory,”  Mosaicmagazine.com , 1/6/25, Ron Baratz writes:

True military experts have always emphasized that war is, in the words of Carl von Clausewitz, “the realm of uncertainty.” But the social scientists deny this and believe instead that they can eliminate uncertainty by developing increasingly complex abstract models. This was an Enlightenment-era folly on a grand, international—and nuclear—scale….
More than anyone else, Ben-Gurion, a gifted autodidact in matters of war, is responsible for shaping the early years of the IDF and its strategic thinking. Ben-Gurion is sometimes reported as having said, “In Israel, if you don’t believe in miracles, you are not a realist.”

Edward Luttwak responded to Ron Baratz’s article (“The IDF’s High-Tech Investments Paid Off, but They Came at a High Cost: Not postmodern fantasies, but a failure to preempt Hamas and Hizballah led to Israel’s current security crisis,” mosaicmagazine.com, 1/23/25):
But I do challenge the accusation that they failed to resign because they were hypnotized by postmodern fantasies as Ran Baratz would have it. There was another motive: they wanted to acquire some other capabilities for the IDF.