Suspended Becoming is a voluntary and often unmarked pause in one’s existential development. Entered for comfort, or stability, yet mistaken for arrival. – ArtúrMacGabhann.com
There are times in life where clarity turns into uncertainty. The once self-evident becomes full with emptiness, and the familiar ways of understanding ourselves and others grind to a halt. The world feels cold and lonely in these moments, with few words to explain why.
Modern life tends to treat such moments as problems to be solved. Attention is quickly directed towards regaining certainty and replacing not-knowing with explanation. Yet sometimes there are valid reasons for us to pause and examine if this impulse misunderstands the important role that ambiguity plays in human life.
Ambiguity is simply the void where understanding has not yet settled. It is not doubt, indecision, confusion, or a failure to understand. To sit in this void is to sit in a cave. Many of the most significant change moments in life happen to us in caves. This is where we give birth to new ideas, concepts, shifts in our values, identities, and relationship to ourselves. These change moments often arise after we experience significant loss or a death of some sort.
To embrace the certainty of ambiguity is to be truthful about our limitations in knowledge, control, and foresight. Sitting in these vast moments, attention has not yet hardened into conclusion. We turn to what is felt, rather than reducing it to what can already be explained.
Holding this state inside ourselves, our inner signals remain audible. Interpretation remains closer to lived experience than to abstract explanations. Discomfort, resistance, response, and curiosity are present before being organised into reasoning. When we give ambiguity space, ambiguity gives us discovered meaning in return.
The challenge today is not that ambiguity exists, but rather there are simply fewer and fewer context in which it is allowed to remain unresolved. We inhabit a world where efficiency, performance, and certainty are highly valued. Ambiguity is easily misunderstood as weakness and often categorised as an obstacle to effective action. Here I want to propose that the opposite may be worth considering: that ambiguity can be a sign of something real taking shape, something that cannot yet be reduced to a conclusion.
This is especially true in a world that is increasingly shaped by systems that depend on its disappearance.
Ambiguity does not absolve us from responsibility. There is no guarantee of wisdom or right action, and it is not always possible to live in. It is the case that for many, uncertainty is not a space for reflection, but an experience of vulnerability, insecurity, or loss of agency. Ambiguity therefore, is not an ideal, but a condition. It is a state which certain forms of moral attentiveness can still remain alive, which must be carried in relation to consequence, responsibility, and action.
Institutions as Coordinating Systems
Institutions are not malevolent in the most basic form, and often arise when people gather around a shared purpose of goal. A company is formed to produce something, a church to carry shared beliefs and practices, an association to create community around a common interest, and a state to organise life at a macro level. In this respect, institutions are coordinating systems that make it possible for people to act together, where individual action would not be sufficient. Without such coordinating systems, for example, hospitals could not exist, and that would be a human tragedy.
From here we can see that institutions arise in response to human needs for cooperation, stability, and shared frameworks. At the same time, coordination has a cost. The larger and more complex a group becomes, the more dependent it becomes on simplification. Common goals must be clearly articulated, roles defined, and expectations made explicit. The ambiguity that could be held in smaller contexts, through closeness and trust becomes increasingly difficult to sustain as an organisation grows.
Over time, this shift is subtle and can occur without being noticed. Mechanisms created to support coordination gradually start to take on a life of their own. Rules, structures, hierarchies, and institutional guidelines become the backbone of scalability. Stability becomes a value in itself with predictability gaining increased importance. At this stage, the institution no longer only serves its members within it, but also its own existence. The shared purpose becomes difficult to separate from the system that carries it.
To understand institutions as coordinating systems as opposed to moral actors, make it possible to observe their behaviour without attributing intention or blame to them.
Institutions as Ethical Machine Systems
The more the institution grows and scales up, coordination is no longer sufficient. The shared purpose must be translated into shared judgement regarding what is acceptable, what is rewarded, what is discouraged, and what should be excluded. The implication is clear. In practice, this means that institutions develop ethical systems. In smaller context, (in the same way with coordinating systems) ethics can remain informal and be handled through conversation and ongoing relationships, where judgement is grounded in lived situations. On an institutional level, this becomes impossible. Ethics must be stabilised, communicated, and upheld among large groups of people who do not know each other.
It is at this point where institutions begin to function as ethical machine systems. Values are encoded into rules, convictions are shaped into doctrines, and principles are translated into policies. What was previously situational and relational is transformed into something repeatable and legible, turning ethics into an operation that a system performs. This transformation is simply a consequence of scale, because institutions cannot pause for moral reflection at every decision. For the institution to function at scale, they must act consistently, reduce uncertainty, and make judgements in advance.
In this process, the way that ethics is lived also changes. Moral responsibility shifts from the individual to the system. Instead of the individual asking what feels right in this particular situation, people are encouraged to ask what is permitted or what aligns with institutional guidelines. Ethical judgement becomes a procedure rather than a lived experience. Adaptation to its framework replaces constant moral attentiveness. Conscience is affirmed as long as it conforms to established rules, and individuals shape themselves according to a given standard.
This is how institutions can function at scale without constant moral friction. Ethical complexity is absorbed by the structure, and ambiguity is resolved in advance. Once again, this is not about bad intentions, but about the fact that human judgement cannot be scaled without limit.
The Disappearance of Ambiguity
When institutions begin to function as ethical machine systems, ambiguity becomes something they have difficulty accommodating. It slows decision-making, introduces hesitation where consistency is required, and opens space for interpretation where uniformity is expected.
Institutions depend on predictability, with clear categories and defined roles. Ambiguity resists this by keeping meaning open and directing questions back toward the assumptions that led to them. From the perspective of machine systems, ambiguity therefore appears as an inefficiency, something that makes predictable outcomes harder to control.
In this context, ambiguity is treated as something to be resolved rather than held with care and attentiveness. Uncertainty is reinterpreted as a lack of clarity, doubt becomes weakness, and hesitation is understood as an inability to adopt a firm position. What is sacrificed here is not confusion, but independent judgment.
Ambiguity is therefore managed out of the systems. This rarely happens through coercion, but through incentives, language, and norms. People are rewarded for certainty, decisiveness, and clarity, and learn, often without noticing, to resolve their inner doubts before they even have the opportunity to be expressed. Over time, ambiguity does not disappear, but it becomes something private. It is still felt, but now as something to be overcome rather than as guidance.
Here the tension between human life and institutions becomes apparent. What protects the individual’s ethical sensitivity threatens the system’s cohesion. What makes systems effective erodes the void in which personal responsibility can operate. The disappearance of ambiguity is structural, and it creates the conditions upon which everything that follows rests.
Belonging as a Too-Early Conclusion
When we feel the discomfort of ambiguity, belonging can often offer a form of relief. Institutions, whether commercial or spiritual, provide structure, coordination, and even a sense of identity. They offer us a place to stand, a language to learn and speak through, and assumptions that reduce uncertainty. For someone experiencing doubt, loneliness, or a dissolution of meaning, this place can feel stabilising.
From this perspective, belonging functions as a sense of closure, where open uncertainty is replaced by shared interpretation, and the discomfort of not knowing is softened through adaptation to something that already appears settled.
This in itself is not problematic as we all need relationships, shared worlds, and the experience of being held by something greater than ourselves. The difficulty arises only when belonging comes too early, before ambiguity has been allowed to do its work.
This void between knowing and not knowing can feel empty and frightening, but also generative of new insights. It is in this birth space that self-reflection takes shape, where values are tested, and where direction can emerge.
When belonging closes this void prematurely, the questions once held open do not disappear. They are absorbed into the institution’s answers. Uncertainty is resolved, yet not necessarily understood, and what is experienced as stability may in fact be postponement.
Belonging then, becomes a way of moving the inner work outside oneself. The institution carries questions that the individual has not yet been able to remain with on their own. This relief comes at a cost. The currency is a gradual shift of trust and integrity from one’s own emerging sense of meaning to external interpretive frameworks.
This trade-off can feel constraining and unresolved as we move forward, and over time, a diffuse unease can arise. Ultimately, we have replaced the slow and often lonely work that ambiguity requires with something external to the individual. Institutions are well equipped to receive people who are ready to adapt, but far less capable of holding those who are still in the process of becoming.
Binary Logic as a Metaphor
There is a basic requirement in many modern systems that is rarely questioned: that things must lead to closure. In computer programming, everything is reduced to binary decisions, where a signal is either on or off, and a condition either true or false. The machine cannot continue as long as uncertainty remains. Ambiguity is therefore impractical and incompatible with the very function.
This logic is extraordinarily powerful. It makes it possible for complex processes to function reliably and at scale. It is also a crucial precondition for modern infrastructure to function at all.
Binary systems require that complexity be translated into categories. Nuances are flattened, context is simplified, and what cannot be expressed in clear terms is transformed from multiple possible meanings into a single true or false. As institutions increasingly adopt machine-like-logic, through metrics, indicators, and regulatory frameworks, this binary orientation shifts from technology into human life. Decisions are formulated as approved or rejected, people are assessed as effective or ineffective, compliant or deviant. Ambiguity does not disappear, but it is filtered out.
Human experience, however, cannot be resolved in this way. Ethical life is rarely binary. Two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. A decision can be necessary and yet harmful; an action can be justified and yet feel wrong. Such tensions cannot be calculated without loss. When institutions operate according to binary logic, they are therefore forced to translate human complexity into simplified statements. This enables coordination but simultaneously creates a growing distance between what can be measured and what can be felt.
Over time, people learn to present themselves in ways that systems can read. Language, behaviours, and even inner narratives are shaped to fit available categories, while that which cannot be translated is set aside. This binary logic metaphor is important because it shows that the elimination of ambiguity is not primarily ideological, but technical. Systems that must function on a large scale require clarity in order to operate. When this requirement of clarity is applied to human life, something essential is lost.
Binary logic does not make institutions cruel, but it does make them indifferent to what cannot be encoded. Ambiguity, by its very nature, cannot be encoded. When this logic is sustained over time, it does not remain external. It is internalised.
Scroogeification
The effects of institutional life are often described in abstract terms: policies, structures, incentives. But institutions do not operate only outside of us. Over time, they are taken in and become part of us. What begins as a way of managing expectations can gradually stiffen into a disposition, a habitual way of relating to the world.
The concept of Scroogeification originates from the 1951 film Scrooge. The story is sometimes understood as a story of moral corruption, but here we see it as a clear illustration of how a person becomes closed through adaptation. Scrooge is not portrayed as inherently lacking empathy, nor as disturbed or cruel for his own sake. He is shown as someone who once cared, who once responded, and who over time learned that sensitivity made him vulnerable to loss, instability, and disappointment. His rigidity is not original. It is learned.
People rarely enter institutions with the intention of becoming hardened. They often arrive open, with a capacity for care and a willingness to engage. They carry ambiguity in the form of unresolved questions, sensitivities, and values that are still taking shape. They are responsive rather than already decided in advance. But in order to function in systems that reward clarity, certainty, and consistency, something has to give.
This is where Scroogeification begins.
Scroogeification is not a moral failure, nor a psychological pathology. It is a survival strategy. The concept describes the gradual shift in which openness is exchanged for certainty, responsiveness for control, and sensitivity for predictability. Like Scrooge, people do not harden because they lack feeling, but because sensitivity has become costly. Ambiguity begins to be perceived as risk. Hesitation as inefficiency. Permeability as exposure.
This hardening rarely happens suddenly. It happens step by step. People learn, piece by piece, which parts of themselves are rewarded and which are punished. Curiosity is replaced by self-assurance. Provisional judgments harden into fixed positions. Institutional language is adopted; its priorities internalised. What was once relational becomes procedural. What was once felt becomes justified. Just as in Scrooge’s case, certainty functions as protection, while at the same time narrowing the field of possible responses.
What makes the transformation at the end of Scrooge so striking is not that Scrooge acquires better principles, but that this certainty collapses. After his night of visions, he wakes not as someone newly certain, but as someone who has suddenly softened. He laughs. He marvels at his own breathing. “I don’t know anything,” he exclaims. “I’m quite a baby.” The line is comic, but its meaning is exact: the master’s stance has fallen away.
The relief Scrooge experiences does not come from finally having understood everything. It comes from the realization that he has not. He discovers, not as an abstract thought but as a bodily felt shift, that what he had taken for knowledge was partly a defense. The joy that follows is not the joy of being right, but the joy of no longer having to be.
This moment is decisive because it makes visible what Scroogeification suppresses. Over time, certainty begins to replace orientation. Knowing replaces listening. Conviction replaces responsiveness. What is lost in this process is not intelligence or goodness, but permeability: the ability to be affected, unsettled, or revised by what exceeds existing frameworks.
Scroogeification produces individuals who function effectively within institutions while becoming increasingly cut off from the inner signals that once guided them. Ethical life shifts from something lived and responsive to something administered and defended. Ambiguity, which was once a source of insight, is no longer regarded as reliable and is instead treated as a problem to be solved. Like Scrooge before his transformation, one can be completely convinced of one’s understanding while no longer being open to the possibility that it is incomplete.
The tragedy of this process is that it is rarely experienced as a choice. It unfolds gradually, under pressure to perform, to belong, and to remain intelligible within the system. By the time the effects become visible, the habits are already established. What may emerge later, if it emerges at all, is a quiet realisation: that what once felt like knowledge was in fact a loss of contact, and that understanding does not always move toward greater certainty.
Scroogeification helps us understand why institutional harm does not require cruel, indifferent, or morally disturbed people. It requires people who, for entirely understandable reasons, have learned to stop listening to the parts of themselves that cannot be translated into the system’s dominant language.
This is not corruption.
It is adaptation.
And it describes what happens when certainty becomes the primary moral guide, rather than attentiveness to what is still in the process of taking form.
This pattern can be described as what I call Scroogeification:
Scroogeification is the gradual hardening that occurs when individuals or organisations learn to trade openness for certainty, sensitivity for control, and responsiveness for predictability—often as an adaptive response to pressure, risk, or loss. – ArtúrMacGabhann.com
Certain Harm
Certainty simplifies decision-making. It enables action without hesitation and reduces the burden of responsibility by framing choices as already made. Within institutions, efficiency and certainty go hand in hand, because this keeps systems in motion.
When ethical judgment is outsourced to rules, doctrines, or policies, individuals no longer need to remain in direct contact with the consequences of their actions. Responsibility is distributed across processes, hierarchies, and justifications. Authorization becomes more important than whether an action feels right, and this is how harm can occur without cruelty.
In religious institutions, violence has been justified through moral certainty in the name of salvation, purity, or truth.
In economic institutions, harm has been justified through necessity in the name of growth, efficiency, or market logic.
In political institutions, violence has been legitimized through certainty about what others need, in the name of security, order, or liberation.
The language differs.
The structure does not.
In every case, certainty replaces listening. Those who are affected are turned into abstractions, and their complexity is reduced to categories that fit the system’s narrative. Suffering becomes a side effect, and responsibility dissolves.
Ambiguity, by contrast, interrupts this process. It slows action, reintroduces ethical friction, and directs attention toward lived consequences rather than authorized purposes. This is why ambiguity is ethically risky for systems, but ethically protective for people.
History offers little evidence that harm is primarily caused by hatred. More often it arises from conviction, when people act with the assurance that what they are doing is right, precisely because the question has already been answered for them.
Certainty makes violence clean.
Ambiguity makes it difficult.
The disappearance of ambiguity does not guarantee harm, but it removes one of the few protections that exist between coordinated action and unreflected consequence. What remains is a system capable of acting decisively, and a human conscience that no longer needs to be consulted.
An Ambiguous Ending
No solution is offered here. To formulate an answer would repeat the very pattern that has been examined, where uncertainty is replaced by certainty and inquiry by conclusion.
Institutions exist because people need coordination, belonging, and shared worlds. There are no life entirely outside systems. The question is therefore not whether we participate, but how, and at what cost.
What is often overlooked is how easily relief is mistaken for resolution, how quickly not-knowing is handed over to structures that are built to function without it, and how willingly inner authority is exchanged for context, adaptation, and certainty.
What is postponed in this way does not disappear. It waits. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes for years.
To remain in ambiguity is not to postpone action indefinitely, but to refuse to let action become dulled.
The question, then, is not whether institutions are right or wrong, helpful or harmful, but something more personal and harder to answer. When certainty is offered, what are we expected to give up? When belonging arrives, which questions are gently closed? And when ambiguity arises in life, is it treated as something to be removed, or as something that can be listened to?
It may be that no immediate answers are available. That, too, belongs here.
If ambiguity is a human necessity, then protecting the right not to know may be one of the smallest, and at the same time most meaningful, forms of care that exist.
