Fear and Doubt

As I get older, I am finding that the certitude that has marked most of my adult life is slipping from me, by degrees inexorable, leaving me at times fearful and unsure, both conditions being quite unfamiliar.  This is a bald statement, to be sure, but if I am honest, it is also a truthful one.  I have noticed this effect only through indirect observation:  where decision-making was once a relatively effortless process, without much in the way of doubt or hesitation (I allow myself to be wrong, but never indecisive), of late it seems to take longer for me to see the appropriate choice, beset as I seem to be by doubt, confusion, and my own version of the soul-rending horror known as 'paralysis through analysis'.
There are just so many choices. The predicament facing humanity has many, many causes, arising from factors both involuntary and deliberate. When assessing the hows and the whys of those factors, it is extremely difficult to understand the process of our imminent arrival at a most hellish destination. Determining a response to that arrival, down here in the mud where most of us live, is proving to be most troublesome.
I have spent a greater portion of my life, then, achieving the ability to precisely and accurately fail to formulate a useful plan.
I have a satisfactorily exquisite insight into the workings of the modern nation-state, but I do not know how to farm. I understand international economics, and can explain the difference between the Chicago and  Austrian economic schools of thought, but I really do not understand how to butcher a deer. Ask me anything you like about the social underpinnings of the military and how oppression is fostered by the banks, but if you need to know where the best wild berries usually are to be found, you'll need to ask someone else.
I can articulate so much about how we got here, and why the solutions to our problems will not be found in better solar arrays, or more efficient batteries, or wind farms, or high-density communities instead of cities.
I have made it my business to understand the meaning of liberalism, the intricacies of stock markets, the fallacy of popular elections, the curse of trade unions, the destructiveness of entitlement mentality. I understand economies of scale, and the relation between complexity and fragility, and why organisation is necessary for survival. 
I know how we got here, and have some ideas about similar outcomes can be avoided in the future, if there is one for humanity.
None of this is useful to me, however, if my son starves because I could not feed him.
I had hoped that all this knowledge would be of use, to explain and articulate, to illustrate and shed light, to exemplify and elucidate. Questions would be asked, once the smoke had cleared, and I would have answers.
It all seemed so sensible, so worthy, to be able to explain what had happened to us, why the switches on the darkened walls no longer brought forth the light, why the toilets did not flush, what the big glass-fronted boxes in so many kitchens were for.
To be able to keep on keepin' on did not seem enough. Simple survival was not sufficient. There had to be an ability to express why, to provide an answer to the questions and accusations. Someone had to know what had happened, how and why it had happened, so that the lessons were not lost in the smoke and fog of despair.
Then my son arrived, and I now fear that my efforts have been in error, that I have wasted the chances I had to be better able to live on, to provide, to foster, to care. I fear that I have been remiss in my studies, that more practical skills would have been the more prudent choice, that there is so much I do not know that I should as a parent.
I fear that the darkness ahead will test me on things I did not study for. And the musings or ravings of all those who have gone before will be as nothing in the simplistic face of starvation.