(The first Part of several Parts.)
Knowing is good.
Not knowing is better.
Knowing not-knowing is better still.
Not knowing what knowing is, is best of all.
Who are you? Do you know? Are you sure you know?
It’s an odd question to ask, and probably beneath even bothering to consider. Like so many other questions, that never get asked, because they are – well – so obvious.
Let’s take me as an example:
My name is Forest Johnson. Except it’s not. It is a random name to label what I write as having been written by me. It is not who I am. Whereas my real name…
Is not me, either.
I had no stake in it. My mother chose it. At random. A label that in no way defines me.
It is a symbol for whatever else I am. It behaves something like a vacuum cleaner, that sucks up everything to do with me, only this particular vacuum cleaner has a bag that can not be changed. Everything that comes within range of it, stays. Gobbled up by this relentless identity.
Having a name, I find I have to defend it, polish it, advertise it, stand up for it, clear it. I find I am unable to act as I might have preferred, in order to protect the reputation that this name gives me.
It reveals me to my enemies. Makes my friends think they know me. And worst of all: leads me to believe I know myself.
All of this, and more, results from this label that stands in for who I am.
I call myself crow. Usually with a lower case “c”. There are many reasons for this. I once raised an orphaned, injured crow. Healed and loved it. Set out to teach it everything I knew. And discovered that it had no use for what I thought I knew, but instead, that I had endless need of what it knew. It knew nothing. Not a single thing. I marveled at this…
Knowing nothing, it observed, with palpable interest, everything in sight. It looked, studied, pondered and saw. Nothing escaped it. Everything fascinated it. It played with its world. And came to be what it played with. It was noisy, sometimes, but in the way of healthy children: unselfconscious. With no other crows around, it said what it said, to itself, and to me. It did not seek to impress others of its kind.
Indeed, it did not know it existed at all, until it discovered its reflection in a pond. And quite probably still did not connect the rippling image within, with itself. But it would return, often, to the pond, to visit whatever it was, that was in the pond.
The crow, no longer a physical part of my life, still lives, as large as life, within my life, bringing a smile and pleasant thoughts, whenever I think of it.
And all of this was possible without an identity.
The crow I knew was “crow”. It bore no other name. I see myself as “crow”, and need no other name. And this freedom from the thing that defines me, serves as well as anything, to illustrate the relative importance, or unimportance, of Identity: a lead ball, a neon sign, a collection of outdated attributes that may, or may not be, currently valid.
I write often of ego. And this is why:
Each of the writers here has a specialty. All know many things, but each has a specific area of expertise. Some know politics. Others philosophy. Etc.
My area of expertise is knowing nothing. The knowing of nothing. Knowing about the absence of knowing. Knowing a great deal about nothing.
And you didn’t get that did you? Nobody does. And yet, my area of expertise is one of the most difficult things there is, even to glimpse, let alone to master. Difficult as it is, there is something even more difficult: to communicate it to others.
To summarize: I know little of politics, and care for them even less.
I am as Apolitical as a man can be.
Tests I have taken have shown me to be consistently slightly to the right of dead-center.
I know nothing of philosophy.
I go out of my way to know as much of nothing as I possibly can.
This, as may have occurred to some of you, renders me something quite different to anyone else. Knowing this, what I write may make more sense than it previously did. It may speak to you, now, in ways as yet unheard, and unknown. I hope so.
It is my belated introduction.
It serves far, far better than a name.
For a name is a word, or two. It is not who you are.
45 queries. 0.965 seconds
“Knowing is good.
Not knowing is better.
Knowing not-knowing is better still.
Not knowing what knowing is, is best of all.”
That does beg the question how this can be maintained with any degree of certainty. But I’m sure the author realized this and the irony of the paradox is the thing the writing was supposed to illustrate. Well-executed in that case.
Also the story of nurturing the crow was touching.
Maintenance is something that really doesn’t apply in this case.
To not-know now is the point.
Outside of knowing, now is never-ending.
A full life is made up of moments like this. One moment.
Or a life may be – more usually – made up of fleeting fragments, all disconnected, and ultimately without meaning.
It has been noticed by many, that any prospective governmental system must include something that has, until now, been missing. Lest it become ever more of the same.
Something new, something lasting, something worth including.
We all know what knowing gets us: each one thinking they know.
All different, and all the same. Every one right, and everyone else wrong.
There is a different way of doing business, and that is where we’re headed.
It probably will not happen all by itself.
I don’t know who you are, but you’re on the wrong site by half a dozen miles.
Also, you’re a bullshitter, an unoriginal one. There’s hundreds of thousands of people who say the exact same things. Not one is honest.
Would you know genuine if you saw it?
Would you prefer to destroy what you don’t yet understand, rather than risk being seen to be foolish?
Are you sure you are in the right place?
We are trying to do something original here. You are not exactly helping. Did you want to help?
You might try just letting things develop, rather than giving in to the urge to wreck it. If I am a bullshitter, then so what? Is a bit of bullshit so threatening?
What if it’s not bullshit?
I am not here for the reasons you think.
Why are you here?
crow, I enjoy reading your posts as I often see myself in what you write.
This post reminds me of the lyrics to the Elton John / Bernie Taupin song ‘Grey Seal’ which includes the lines:
‘And tell me grey seal
How does it feel
To be so wise
To see through eyes
That only see what’s real
Tell me grey seal’
We humans seem to have great difficulty seeing ‘what’s real’.
I wish I could write lyrics like that.
crow and Socrates. Good company.
Crows are widely considered to be the most intelligent of birds.
What we believe is sometimes more important than what we know.
The map is not the territory.
The Tao that can be told is not the Tao.
:)
I think that the long tradition of mindful meditation has sought to promote this type of “not knowing”. In the spirit of this tradition, I would say that the crow doesn’t judge his experience, he just experiences it. Experiencing, without judgement, seems like a good way to be in the world. However, no one can help that they come into adulthood already set-up with a unique genetic code, equipped with its own unique software. Everyone also spends their formidable years experiencing human interaction within a unique social milieu. We all also experience a particular style of parenting and associated family life. These experiences prime and predispose us to experience our subjective world in a unique way. Like it or not, these experiences have shaped you–down to the smallest components of the brain–into who you are now. You may claim to take the existential position of not knowing, but you do so in a way that is quite uniquely you, Mr. crow. :)
Quite so.
I was as others are, until I was not.
It took many years of spring-cleaning to empty out all of the stuff collected while “attempting” to be a social creature.
I do not say I am any different to anybody else, only that I have discovered that I can be.
Thus, if I can be, while being no different to anybody else, so can anybody else.
This is why I am here, on Amerika, in spite of the fact I do not seem to belong.
The way we are, is the way we have come to be.
This does not mean we can become nothing else.
Change yourself – become your potential – and the world changes with you.
One by one.