(Cross-posted at My Left Wing.)
Former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, once said something along these lines:
There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
Whatever anyone might think about Rumsfeld, that is actually a very smart statement and something that should be held in mind. For, indeed, there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. That is, there are things that we know that we know. There are things that we know we do not know. And there are things that we do not know that we do not know.
Quite right.
Think about this, if you will. Let’s say that the sum total of all possible knowledge takes up the volume of your house or apartment. In that case the known knowns, human knowledge as it currently stands, might fit into a shoe box under your bed and what any single one of us knows to be true would be something smaller than a thimble in the shoebox. Recognizing that should be humbling for all of us.
Y’know, Sunday, while most of you guys were watching the game, I was hooking-up with an old buddy of mine from UCONN. Stu. Stu was an outright maniac when I knew him as an undergrad. They even booted him out of college after only six months. They got him on academic probation, as well as social probation. He was not going to class. He was gobbling drugs and drinking. And he was getting into fights. Yet, at the same time, he was an exceedingly likeable and intelligent fellow.
Anyway, so after not seeing him for years, I got an email out of the blue from the guy telling me that he was going to be in San Francisco on a business trip. In the years since his ignominious departure from UCONN, Stu got his shit together and is now married with a kid and the owner of his own corporate leadership consulting firm.
So, last night Laurie, Stu, and myself caught dinner in Chinatown and then went out for drinks. (Stu, btw, did not partake.) And we had a very pleasant time together and it was just really, really nice to see the guy after all these years. During the course of our conversation he started talking about different types of intelligence. He drew a distinction between knowing, seeing, and sensing. Knowing, according to Stu, represents the known knowns. He did not put it in those terms, but that is essentially what he meant. The sum total of human knowledge. That which we know or, at least, that which we think that we know. Seeing represents human potential. Think of a sculptor contemplating a block of marble and seeing in his or her mind’s eye the final product. That’s seeing. It is the potential for creation or the observance of patterns. Sensing, as described by Stu, is the intelligence of the body.
However, Stu said, certitude is the shadow of knowing. Certitude is when we are so convinced of the rightness of our views that our minds close down and anyone who contradicts what we think that we know to be true becomes the enemy. If the truth that we hold to is vital, important, and socially relevant than the people who disagree can easily be seen as a menace to society… or perhaps even something akin to evil. For many liberals, therefore, Evangelical Christians are not just wrong about this or that, but are, in fact, a menace to all that is Good and True and Right. They are not merely wrong, but must be mocked and disdained and demeaned. Our certitude makes of them the Hated Other. And, needless to say, many of them presumably believe the same thing about us secular, liberal, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, moonbats.
It’s the certitude. Certitude is the shadow of knowing.
It’s when we are so confident in our alleged known knowns that we project all sorts of nefarious intent on those who disagree with us. It’s when we decide that Donald Rumsfeld or Benjamin Netanyahu are “monsters,” as I recently saw the latter described. It’s when we dehumanize ourselves through the dehumanization of others. It’s when we are so convinced of our rightness that it becomes self-righteousness. It’s when we divide the world into those who are with us and those who are the enemy.
It is the Shadow.