The social demand for political certainty is usually greater than the supply of evidence that supports that certainty. Politics is primarily driven by belief, not evidence.

Evidence-based certainty uses rational scientific process to gradually develop testable theories based on empirical evidence. Belief-based certainty works in the other direction, the desired certainty is known and rationality is abused to build on selective evidence to “prove” that belief.

Belief-based certainty has higher political value in the short term because it satisfies the immediate emotional demand for certainty. If a belief immediately resolves uncertainties and complexities and it is repeated within the culture then it becomes a political fact for those that need it.

Evidence-based inquiry is a process that only produces a gradually increasing probability of certainty in the long term. Facts usually lose the news cycle but eventually win the cultural war.

Markets mediate the uncertainty of survival and governments mediate the uncertainty of markets. The uncertainties of competition in the market motivates individuals to create efficiencies and innovations in order to enjoy the greater certainties of wealth. Government regulates the market to insure competition where it works to create opportunities and replaces the market where it restricts opportunities and exploits inequalities.

So the uncertainty of competition is both the bull that drives the economy and the bear that everyone seeks shelter from. Government has to both enable and disable the uncertainty of competition for the greater good.

Those on the left seek shelter from uncertainty in public sector employment, labor unions and government programs that provide a safety net where markets fail as in education and health care. Those on the right seek shelter from uncertainty in government contracts, government regulations that protect businesses from competition and public funding of the externalities of business which includes the costs of infrastructure, pollution and periodic market failures of the financial system.

Neither side wants to pay for the other side’s protection racket. Both sides have to be kept in check and both are prone to their own particular kind of corruption.

But when multinational corporations cooperate to pit one country against another to create a regulation free global business environment then those corporations have the upper hand and that only creates certainties for a tiny minority at the top and cascading waves of uncertainty and disruption for everybody else.

An individual's political perspective can be roughly determined by two interacting factors; wealth or privilege and tolerance for uncertainty.

When one has much to gain and few advantages to lose they are open to reformers and economic change. Poverty makes people socialist by necessity. When an individual achieves a certain level of wealth or advantage they begin to fear they have more to lose from political change than what they would gain. Relative wealth makes people conservative with fear.

But the degree of socialism or conservatism varies from person to person depending on their own particular tolerance for uncertainty.

If one has little tolerance for uncertainty and they perceive they have any amount of advantage to lose then they resist change. So poor workers with little tolerance for uncertainty who feel they have a marginal advantage from racial privilege may want economic change but fear any social change. Young professionals with rising incomes and little tolerance for uncertainty find they no longer agree with the reformers of their college days and become economically conservative.

But if one is tolerant of uncertainty then they can be relatively wealthy and not resistant to economic or social change. 

Analysis deals with a set of knowns and ignores everything outside of the set. But when we consider context first, including what we do not know about a situation, we are confronted with the assumptions that we use to deal with the unknown; religion, superstition, folklore, conventional wisdom and the prevailing cultural norms. So when we consider context before analysis it becomes clear that the underlying currency of our cultural transactions is certainty based on either evidence or belief.

Those are two interconnected sets of certainties, our physical limitations within our environment and a cultural set of shared symbols and values. Our language and shared beliefs help us mediate the uncertainties of our physical existence. Those beliefs are embedded in a personal narrative.

If you were to closely observed someone throughout one day you would find that they acted in ways that reflected a broad range of beliefs. Survival requires adaptability, sometimes we need to be absolutists (to respond to challenges that threaten our welbeing) and sometimes we need to be relativists (to understand the challenges in order to learn from them). However if you asked that person to explain their actions throughout the day you would probably find that they defined their behavior in a narrow singular sense. We like to have a narrative that we can wrap all of the uncertainties of the world—and perhaps more importantly, the uncertainties of ourselves—into a compelling story.

The emotional context of our experience may determine the narrative of how we mediate the unknown. If we feel our past was chaotic then we seek absolute explanations of problems and solutions. If we feel our past was restricted we resist singular deterministic explanations. We all use absolute and relative judgements but explain those judgements in partisan terms to maintain our consistency.

Our narratives do determine many of our decisions but they do not limit our choices. The danger lies when our narrative overrules our intuition, when absolutists impose their judgements upon everyone else and relativists refuse to judge themselves.

If God is what we do not know then prayer is curiosity, love is faith and sin is acting as if we know what God is.

If God is what we do not know then we are as God to the experience of all others as all others are as God to us.