Banksy and The Price of Certainty

This week, after years of mystery and speculation, the identity of the street artist known as Banksy was finally revealed. Identified as Robin Gunningham, a man in his early 50s from Bristol, England, he is an unlikely success story. Known for some high-profile art stunts, including partially shredding his best known work “Girl with Balloon” during an auction in 2018, Banksy’s works are some of the most expensive to come out of England this century. (“Girl with Balloon” sold for a little over 1 million pounds moments before it was shredded; the partially shredded work was sold three years later for 18 million pounds.)

Part of Banksy’s allure has always been his anonymity and the mysteriousness that surrounded him. But, now that his identity has been discovered, there is a raging debate over whether that will increase or decrease the value of his paintings. Some argue that his mystery was part of his appeal, and once it disappears, so too might some of the allure and value.

Others, however, insist the opposite and argue that confirming his identity will dramatically increase the value of his work. Their argument is that collectors like certainty. They want authentication and verification. Artwork, much like the stock market, doesn’t like uncertainty. Now that Banksy has a face, a name, and a biography, it will make his art feel more secure and real, and therefore more valuable.  The irony is that nothing about his artwork has or will change. And yet, somehow, the mere removal of uncertainty alone could shift its value significantly.

That tells us something important about human nature because with this debate, a deeper question emerges. How much is certainty worth to us? The writer Oliver Burkeman suggests that our discomfort with uncertainty is not a small feature of our psychology, it is one of its driving forces.

Reflecting on the decisions we later regret, he writes that often what pushed us to choose was not clarity or conviction, but simply the desire to escape the uneasy feeling of not knowing.

Consider any significant decision you’ve ever taken that you subsequently came to regret: a relationship you entered despite being dimly aware that it wasn’t for you, or a job you accepted even though, looking back, it’s clear that it was mismatched to your interests or abilities. If it felt like a difficult decision at the time, then it’s likely that, prior to taking it, you felt the gut-knotting ache of uncertainty; afterwards, having made a decision, did those feelings subside? If so, this points to the troubling possibility that your primary motivation in taking the decision wasn’t any rational consideration of its rightness for you, but simply the urgent need to get rid of your feelings of uncertainty.

(Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking)

In other words, we don’t always choose what is right, we choose what brings relief. Anyone who has faced a difficult life decision recognizes this feeling: the tension, the ambiguity, the inner pull in multiple directions. And then, once a decision is made, even before we know if it was correct, there is a certain calm that comes when the uncertainty is gone. But, as Burkeman argues, that calm can be misleading. It may come not from truth, but from closure.

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum takes this idea even further. She argues that a meaningful human life is built specifically on a willingness to live with uncertainty, to be open to outcomes we cannot control, and to trust in a world that does not offer guarantees. That kind of openness is not easy. It means accepting vulnerability. It means recognizing that we cannot fully secure ourselves against disappointment or doubt. According to Nussbaum, though, this is not a flaw in the human condition. Rather, it is at the very heart of what it means to live a good life.

Judaism, in a countercultural way, has long embraced this tension. At its core, Emunah is the ability to move forward in life without full clarity, to act without having every answer and to trust even when you don’t have control. In many ways, faith most likely begins where certainty ends.

We live in a world that constantly pushes us toward greater certainty. We seek out more data, more guarantees, and more models to give us clarity about the future. We want to know that our choices will work out, that our paths are correct, and that our investments, financial and personal, are secure. But life rarely offers that kind of assurance.

Only time will tell whether revealing Banksy’s identity will increase the value of his art. Perhaps collectors will now feel more comfortable and certain and will therefore spend more. But, while artwork and the markets might reward certainty, a meaningful life may require something else entirely: the courage to live without it. Whether it’s learning to make decisions without guarantees, to build relationships without knowing how they will unfold or to believe, to trust, and to move forward, even when the picture is incomplete.

In the end, the question is not just what certainty adds. It is what our need for certainty might be taking away.