Alas, it’s time once again to revisit VUCA. Early in the pandemic, I gave two presentations about dealing with uncertainty. Institutions were struggling to respond to COVID. Many people were freaking out. But not me: I had a conceptual framework that helped me make sense of what was going on. Now that we’re again living through uncertainty, I wanted to share what I said at the time. Turns out, I never wrote about the framework itself. Let’s correct that. When contexts shift, it’s harder to act skillfully. The end of the Cold War was such a time. The tense order that emerged after World War II had ended; military leaders had to make decisions in unfamiliar territory. In response, the U.S. Army War College produced VUCA, a framework for describing unsettling contexts. It’s an acronym of their four main characteristics: Volatility: things are changing fast and often. You may understand what’s happening, but the pace of change makes it hard to respond skillfully. Uncertainty: you may understand the challenge’s basic cause and effect, but not much else. Key knowledge might be missing, but you don’t know. Complexity: the challenge has too many factors and components to grok. You have access to information — perhaps too much to connect the dots. Ambiguity: the situation is unclear, even if you have information. Causal relationships aren’t obvious, and past experiences may not apply. These four characteristics are often rendered in a 2x2 matrix. One dimension measures the degree to which we can predict the results of our actions. The other measures how much we know. For example, if we can’t predict outcomes and lack reliable knowledge, we’re in ambiguity. If we understand the situation but things are changing rapidly, we’re facing volatility. Adapted from a diagram by Nate Bennett and G. James Lemoine in the Harvard Business Review As you may expect, different characteristics call for different responses. My understanding comes from Bob Johansen’s VUCA Prime framework, which I paraphrase here: Volatility calls for vision. Draw a clear, compelling picture of where you’re heading beyond the current turmoil. Uncertainty calls for understanding. Look past headlines to the deeper forces driving change. Complexity calls for clarity. Map the system; get a grip on the entities and relationships driving change. Ambiguity calls for agility. Take the next small step; get your bearings; correct course quickly. Keeping cool isn’t easy, but it can be done. It requires some detachment. Tune out the news and take a longer-term view. Read the Stoics. Ask yourself: what’s the worst that could happen? How much is actually under your control? How can you take care of yourself, your family, and your community? Managing and structuring information flows is crucial. You need systems that surface the right information — clear, trustworthy, timely, and aligned with your goals. Information architects can help, since our focus is designing environments that support insight and skillful action. Above all, don’t panic. Nobody guaranteed this would be an easy ride. Change is the nature of things. If you panic, you’ll freeze or thrash about; either response makes things worse. Business as usual isn’t in the cards for us, but acting skillfully can be. If you found these ideas useful, check out Johansen’s Leaders Make the Future, which offers ten skills leaders can develop to thrive in a VUCA world. Much of what I know about the subject comes from this practical, well-grounded book. (Aaand… I just realized there’s a new edition — time to re-visit!)

Conversations on the Traction Heroes podcast are proving highly relevant. To wit, episode 7 delves into how the questions we ask ourselves influence our ability to act skillfully. This came up in the context of dealing with uncertainty. Specifically, Harry brought to the conversation the following fragment from Rich Diviney’s book Masters of Uncertainty: To remain grounded in the sphere of what you know and control, cultivate a habit of asking yourself better questions. The brain operates with a question-answer mechanism: it continuously assesses the surroundings with questions and then conjures answers. This typically happens subliminally and instantly, faster than you can notice. You can, however, participate consciously in this process and influence your thoughts and feelings by introducing your own questions. When you introduce a question into conscious thought, the mind is compelled to come up with answers. The problem is that it’s all too common to default to reactive, negative, and sometimes emotion-laden questions such as “Why am I so bad at this?” or “Why can’t I succeed?” Your brain will immediately begin to give you answers to these—yet the answers will not lead to enlightenment. Rather, they will spiral you into further negativity and anxiety. Masters of Uncertainty steer their thoughts with better, more effective questions — questions that center on what they can ascertain and influence. Well aware that knowledge morphs into power, they prime their minds with inquiries like “What do I know? What can I control?” The brain can’t help but answer these questions in ways that put you at the helm. These are the inquiries that empower and hone your focus on traversing uncertainty, not succumbing to it. I hadn’t heard of Masters of Uncertainty before, but I’m reading it and hope to do a book notes post soon. Working with uncertainty is especially relevant now, given the changes rocking global markets. At least part of the secret to navigating turbulence is learning to keep your cool. It’s not a new idea (the Stoics and Buddhists said this centuries ago) but it’s worth revisiting — and internalizing. Traction Heroes ep. 7: Better Questions

During week 14 of the humanities crash course, I explored foundational myths of Western Culture — written during the Roman Empire when decadence was setting in. I paired them with a classic film about social decadence set in mid-20th century Rome. Readings Gioa’s recommendations were a bit more open-ended this week: books 1 and 2 of the Aeneid, book 1 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and “selected Roman poems and aphorisms.” Rather than read a whole book, I sought out some of these latter shorter works online. I also read the most famous section of the Satyricon. The Aeneid is one of the classic epic poems of antiquity. Written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BCE, it aimed to formalize founding myths for the Roman Empire. It’s a sort of sequel to the Iliad and explicitly echoes the Odyssey’s structure. Fortunately, I only had read the first two books: Book 1: As Aeneas sails toward Italy after the events of the Trojan war; the gods conjure a storm that scatters the fleet. Aeneas and his crew are shipwrecked on the coast of Libya. The goddess Venus guides them to nearby Carthage, where Queen Dido is building a new city. She asks Aeneas to tell his story. Book 2: Aeneas recounts the fall of Troy, focusing on the Trojan horse episode. Despite warnings, the Trojans bring the gift horse into the city, only to be overwhelmed by the Greek soldiers hiding inside. King Priam is killed in the ensuing fight; Aeneas is about to kill himself in despair but the ghost of Hector urges him to flee instead. I said “fortunately” because these poems were the least pleasant reading I’ve done so far in the course. Perhaps it’s due to the translation I used, but it might also be because this work was created to glorify the Roman emperor. Like most ideological art, I found it pompous and tedious. In many ways, Metamorphoses was its opposite. Written later, (2-8 CE,) its focus is mythology drawn from the classic Greek pantheon, but parsed through Roman sensibilities. The theme is transformation: gods, demigods, and humans shapeshift, becoming plants, animals, constellations, etc. to change the trajectory of events or escape suffering Like the Aeneid, Metamorphoses also explores the foundations of Roman imperial rule, but it comes to the subject from a more ironic and irreverent POV. By focusing on change, the poem has interesting parallels with Buddhist teachings and the I Ching. Given its tone, cadence, and subject matter, I enjoyed it more than the Aeneid. The third major work this week was Petronius’s Satyricon, arguably the first Western novel. It was written during the reign of emperor Nero (mid 1st-century CE,) and only fragments survive. They present the misadventures of Encolpius and his companions Giton (a former slave and teenage lover) and Ascyltus, a friend, antagonist, and former lover. The novel portrays a morally chaotic and decadent society reveling in excess, deception, and sensuous pleasures. I read the most famous section, Trimalchio’s feast, which provides vivid descriptions of Roman excesses during this time. Characters come across as tone-deaf — especially the nouveau riche, whose vulgarity and self-importance must have seemed outrageous even to people with moral standards very different from ours. I was surprised at how richly these characters were portrayed — and how little people have changed in two millennia. Audiovisual Music: Arias by Puccini and Verdi. This is the second time during the course I’ve listened to opera: a medium I love but don’t include much in my regular rotation. This was a good opportunity to revisit some of these magnificent works. Art: Gioia recommended looking at cave paintings. I punted. Several years ago, I saw Werner Herzog’s CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, and had my fill for cave paintings. Cinema: I read the Satyricon this week because I saw Fellini’s adaptation in college. At the time, I also saw his LA DOLCE VITA. Even though LDV is the more famous of the two, my memory of it was fuzzier, so I chose to revisit it now. Marcello Mastroianni plays Marcello, a womanizing gossip journalist drifting through postwar Rome. He has serious aspirations as a novelist, but allows himself to be swept along by the seductive currents of Roman nightlife and celebrity culture. Like the Satyricon, we get story fragments rather than a unified plot. The fragments loosely echo the seven deadly sins and seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, framing the film as a kind of spiritual inventory of modern life. I was surprised this classic film was only available to stream through Plex. It was a poor experience, riddled with ads and useless subtitles. My Italian is rusty, but I got most of the film anyway. (I may start seeing other Italian and French movies without subtitles as practice.) Reflections The common thread this week was social decadence — especially the kind that takes hold when a society grows too wealthy and powerful for its own good. I read the Aeneid as a puff piece intended to instill a false sense of pride through a constructed continuity with the Greek civilization Romans admired — and supplanted. Metamorphoses took a more lighthearted approach, suggesting all things pass and that change is the only constant. Both the Satyricon and LA DOLCE VITA illuminated the vulgarity and moral emptiness at the core of decadence, turning it into ironic — and sometimes painful — entertainment. Can we see our own time with such detachment? Can we recognize the Virgils trying to enshrine the inexcusable? The Ovids who myth-make more lightly and playfully? Or the Petroniuses and Fellinis who nudge us to laugh — and maybe cry — at the foolishness and pain of living adrift in a sensuous world? Notes on Note-taking Given my difficulties with the Aeneid, I found its Wikipedia page insightful. The summary of books 1 and 2 gave me an outline to better understand the work. As with previous weeks, I also bounced reflections off ChatGPT and summarized using the Obsidian Text Generator plugin. Both helped me grok the readings and how they relate to each other. A realization on process: writing these posts helps me focus and power through even when readings get tedious. If I hadn’t committed to sharing publicly, I likely would’ve bailed on the Aeneid. I read with more focus and attention when knowing I’ll publish these little “book reports” at the end of the week. Up Next From Gioia’s description, I expect next week’s reading — Boethius’s On the Consolation of Philosophy — will be highly relevant to our current predicament. Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment. See you next week!

This week, I sampled one of the world’s great spiritual texts: the Qur’an. I also read poems by Rumi and saw a movie that led me to question my understanding of both. Readings As with many other people in the West, my understanding of Islam mostly comes from the news — often, in negative light. Also, I was raised Catholic and can’t help but parse these teachings through that tradition. Which is to say, I tried to read objectively, but aware that I’m likely biased. That said, I relished the opportunity to experience this book firsthand. The Qur’an has an interesting structure. Like many other books, it’s divided into chapters (surahs.) But instead of a chronological or topical organization, chapters are roughly sequenced from longest to shortest. (Except the first, which is a short prayer.) Gioia recommended fifteen surahs. As I often do after reading classic texts, I asked ChatGPT for a summary. Here it is verbatim: 1. Al-Fatiha (The Opening): A short prayer for guidance, mercy, and the straight path. Central to every unit of Muslim prayer. 2. Al-Baqara (The Cow): Longest surah; covers law, ethics, worship, community life, and stories of earlier prophets. Establishes Islam’s moral and legal foundations. 3. Al-Imran (The Family of Imran): Addresses Christians and Jews, emphasizes the unity of divine messages, and recounts the stories of Mary and Jesus with warnings against disbelief. 4. An-Nisa (The Women): Focuses on justice, women’s rights, inheritance laws, and proper conduct in war and peace; warns against hypocrisy and betrayal. 5. Al-Ma’ida (The Table Spread): Deals with dietary laws, contracts, and relations with Jews and Christians. Emphasizes loyalty to God’s covenant and the finality of Muhammad’s message. 12. Yusuf (Joseph): A narrative surah telling the story of Joseph in a literary and emotional style. A tale of patience, betrayal, forgiveness, and divine providence. 17. Al-Isra (The Night Journey): Takes its name from Muhammad’s mystical journey to Jerusalem and heaven. Emphasizes the Qur’an’s authority and the consequences of moral choices. 18. Al-Kahf (The Cave): Contains allegorical stories (Sleepers of the Cave, Moses and the Wise Man, Dhul-Qarnayn) about faith, knowledge, and the trials of life. 32. As-Sajda (The Prostration): Stresses the importance of divine revelation and resurrection. Calls for humility and recognition of God’s signs in creation. 36. Ya-Sin: Considered the “heart of the Qur’an”; focuses on God’s power, the resurrection, and human accountability, often recited for the dying. 55. Ar-Rahman (The Most Merciful): A poetic celebration of God’s mercy, creation, and judgment—famous for the refrain: “Which of your Lord’s favors will you deny?” 67. Al-Mulk (The Sovereignty): Reflects on God’s dominion over life and death. Encourages awe and contemplation of the natural world as a sign of divine power. 103. Al-Asr (Time): A short, stark reminder that time is running out—success lies in faith, good works, truth, and patience. 112. Al-Ikhlas (Sincerity): A concise declaration of pure monotheism: God is one, eternal, without equal or offspring. As may be evident here, the Qur’an blends spiritual teachings with social instruction, proposing norms, values, and institutions for a society centered on God. If Christianity’s core message is love, the core here is belief — specifically, belief in one supreme God. All else falls in line behind that idea. Reading Rumi deepened my understanding and appreciation. Through his poems, I perceived signals of what it might be like to live in a world saturated with God: ecstasy at the sight of a flower or the moon’s reflection in a still pond. Still, he reminds us these are only words: This is how it always is A great silence overcomes me, Gioia recommended a selection of Rumi’s poems, but I’ve enjoyed them enough that I’ve decided to read a whole collection. Rather than speedruning through it, I’ll read a bit at a time during my morning journaling sessions throughout the rest of the year. Audiovisual Music: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan plus music from Tunisia. I was familiar with Ali Khan; his music was everywhere in the 1990s. He’s also one of the performers in the LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST soundtracks I highlighted earlier this year. Revisiting his music now gave me a new appreciation; like Rumi, he seems to express the ecstasy of living in a world soaked in divinity. Art: Gioia recommended looking at Islamic architecture. I’ve had the privilege of visiting two of the world’s great Islamic buildings, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and the Alhambra in Granada. So that’s where my mind went. Hagia Sophia is one of the most impressive spaces I’ve ever been in; it must be experienced firsthand. That said, this NOVA program explains the building’s historical, cultural, and structural significance: This short presentation helped me understand the spiritual significance of sequencing and structure in Islamic religious buildings: The Alhambra is impressive for different reasons. For one thing, it’s not a religious structure. It’s arguably most famous for its beautiful mosaics. This video focuses on the palace’s hydraulic network, one of the world’s great engineering feats: This TEDEd presentation helped me understand the significance of the astonishing geometric decorations in these buildings: Both of these buildings also highlight Islam’s complex relationship with Christianity. Hagia Sophia started as a Christian church before being converted into a mosque, and the Alhambra stands as a reminder that part of Europe was under Islamic rule for a time. Cinema: rather than selecting a movie related to this week’s readings, I chose one I’d wanted to watch for a long time: Hal Ashby’s 1979 satire BEING THERE, starring the great Peter Sellers. By chance, a sheltered, single-minded, TV-obsessed, illiterate gardener named Chance is unwittingly thrust into the highest echelons of economic and political power. Due to his genteel demeanor, his naive utterances are continually misinterpreted as profundities. He remains aloof and uninvolved even as he becomes incredibly powerful. Rather, he becomes powerful because he is aloof and uninvolved. He has no awareness of (or concern for) how his words are interpreted, so he remains cool and neutral. This amplifies his image as a sage, feeding his growing myth. He and his interlocutors live in diverging worlds, reading into each others’ utterances meanings that aren’t there. Reflections Or are they? The movie suggests words don’t have inherent meaning; the meaning is in how we interpret them. Context informs understanding. Lacking an official backstory, people parse Chance through their preconceptions. In the first act, he introduces himself as “Chance the gardener.” But the idea that this seemingly refined gentleman is a mere gardener seems so unlikely that his interlocutor misinterprets his name as the more upper class Chancey Gardiner. And so it remains. When Chance(y) says “I like to watch,” he means something very different than what others hear, leading to particular and often unexpected actions. And it’s actions that ultimately matter. The Talmud puts it succinctly: “We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” I think about this whenever I engage with ancient scriptures. These texts were produced by and for very different cultures. The words mean different things to me than they likely meant to their original audiences. It’s not just that they were written in a language I don’t understand: they were written in a world I don’t understand. And yet, they endure. Why? We make the meaning. More precisely: meaning emerges as we parse the text through our particular understandings. And meaning adds value to our lives. What I took from my reading is that Islam positions itself as the culmination of monotheism. Characters, stories, and themes from the Jewish and Christian scriptures are present here too, but with a different focus. Somewhere along the line, Judaism and Christianity softened on the idea that there’s only one God. Islam aims to correct course. The idea of single-mindedly centering your life on something other than yourself is appealing. (Post-Freud, we’d say ego is the enemy.) The concept isn’t unique to Islam, of course. (And again, I’m likely reading into it.) What seems different is the Qur’an’s confident assertion of its message’s universal relevance. I can see how this all-encompassing vision can be seen as incompatible with secular post-modern societies. The Abrahamic traditions are also closely related, which can foster mutual understanding but also intensify disagreement. But I also sense the conflict emerges from literal readings, which we shouldn’t do. Again, these words emerge from — and speak to — different contexts. And I see the transcendent beauty in Rumi’s poems, the patterns of the Alhambra, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s singing, much as I do in Chartres Cathedral, the Mass in B Minor, and the Divine Comedy. All remind me that words can connect people to higher orders of being and to each other, elevating us all. Does God come in through the words or through what we bring to the words? Does it matter? It does. As Nietzsche warned, once we lose sense of the words’ specialness, we approach them differently — much like Chancey’s friends would hear him differently if they knew he was mere Chance. Some might say truth is what ultimately matters: that Chance is just a gardener who is, in the words of a character who knows, “stuffed with rice pudding between th’ ears. Shortchanged by the Lord, and dumb as a jackass.” But another character who also knows opts to not reveal the “truth” to avoid destroying his dying friend’s comforting illusion. An act of mercy? Delusion? Both? And then there’s the film’s last shot, which I won’t spoil. Let’s just say it casts doubts on whether any of these characters — or us voyeurs in this world of Chance — really knows what is in front of our eyes. Notes on Note-taking I used ChatGPT more extensively this week than at any previous point in the course. I started a ChatGPT project with the following system prompt: You are an expert tutor in literature, history, music, cinema, and more – in short, the humanities. I am in a year-long program to read through (and listen to and watch) the most important humanities works from across the world. You’ll provide summaries, pointers, and advice. Respond concisely but helpfully. Whenever possible, contextualize content by pointing out possible parallels with the modern day. Within this context, I asked ChatGPT to bring perspective to what I was reading — especially some of the most difficult passages and parallels between the other two Abrahamic traditions. I found parts of surah 4 challenging — especially those that address warfare and justice. I asked ChatGPT for a charitable interpretation of the scripture, and the LLM helpfully responded with explanations that helped me understand the text in its broader context. ChatGPT didn’t recommend it, but this video from Bishop Robert Barron also reminded me that the Judeo-Christian scriptures also have similarly difficult passages and that we must interpret them in the context for which they were written: After watching the TEDEd video about geometry in Islamic architecture, I asked ChatGPT, “How does the repetition through tessellation evident in Islamic decoration reflect the religion’s spiritual values?” I’ll quote its answer verbatim, since I found it both insightful and exemplary of the value I’m getting from using AI in this way: Beautiful question—and one that gets at the visual theology of Islam. Islamic decoration, especially through geometric tessellation, is not just ornamental—it’s deeply expressive of spiritual truths. Here’s how repetition, pattern, and abstraction in Islamic art reflect the core values of the faith: ⸻ 1. Unity in Multiplicity (Tawhid) The oneness of God (tawhid) is Islam’s central belief. Repeating geometric patterns express how divine unity underlies all diversity—a single pattern unfolds into infinite forms, just as all creation reflects the One. Spiritual message: Beneath complexity lies a single divine source. ⸻ 2. Infinity and the Transcendent Tessellations can theoretically extend forever—they have no beginning or end. This evokes infinity, a symbol of God’s eternal, boundless nature. The viewer is drawn into a contemplative state by the endless repetition. Spiritual message: God is beyond time, form, and limit. ⸻ 3. Non-figurative, Non-idolatrous Representation Islamic tradition discourages figural imagery in sacred contexts to avoid idolatry. Abstract, geometric art avoids representing God and instead points toward Him by evoking beauty, harmony, and transcendence. Spiritual message: God cannot be pictured—but can be reflected in patterns of perfection. ⸻ 4. Contemplation and Remembrance (Dhikr) Like repeated prayer or names of God, visual repetition becomes a form of remembrance. Islamic art invites stillness, reflection, and mental surrender—a visual dhikr. Spiritual message: Still the ego, contemplate the divine, dissolve into the pattern. ⸻ 5. Mathematics as Sacred Language Islamic artists used advanced geometry and symmetry, often guided by spiritual cosmology. The precision of the art mirrors the divine order in the cosmos, hinting that the universe is intelligible, ordered, and meaningful. Spiritual message: Creation is a sign (ayah) pointing to its Creator. The LLM included a helpful table: Artistic Feature Spiritual Reflection Repetition / Tessellation Unity, infinity, divine order No images of God or people Transcendence, anti-idolatry Symmetry and precision Balance, harmony, divine perfection Infinite extension God’s boundlessness and eternal presence Meditative patterning Encourages contemplation and surrender It concluded: Islamic art, in this sense, functions like visual theology: it doesn’t depict the divine, but invites you to perceive it—not through representation, but through pattern, balance, and beauty. Would you like to see some examples or diagrams that illustrate how these patterns are constructed mathematically or spiritually? I was intrigued by this last question, especially given that OpenAI just released improved ChatGPT image rendering capabilities. So I responded, “Yes, please show me an example diagram that illustrates these principles.” At this point, ChatGPT generated this image: Up Next We’re moving into the second quarter of the course. Gioia recommends books 1 and 2 of the Aeneid, book 1 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and a few other Roman poems, aphorisms, and proverbs. So we’re on our way back to Rome! Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment. See you next week!