Knowledge is knowing facts.

Understanding is knowing how to know.

We can have knowledge of understanding if we have acquired new understanding. Then we know how to know it.

If we have knowledge only from one understanding, we do not know how to know understanding.

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If you do not understand the above, consider the possibility that this might be an example of not knowing how to know.

Entertaining this possibility means to feel anxiety in the face of dread. Dread is why babies cry.

Generally, we just know with whatever understanding we happen to have. That is, we misunderstand. We follow intuitive impulses away from anxiety to preserve the understandings we have, which keep us sane — which in fact are our sanity. We choose misunderstandings over understandings to avoid the trauma of birth.

The ability to recognize the experience of not-knowing-how-to-know is the key to acquiring new understanding.

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To know that you do not know is good — but to act in faith that you might one day understand and know is much better. This is the sole value of humility. All other kinds of humility are submissiveness, practical responses to weakness, or fear of responsibility.

Engineers (including those social engineers called “managers” and “administrators”) think about things and use. Marketers think about media and message.

Neither of these perspectives are sufficient. The mid-point of average of these perspectives is not sufficient. Both of these perspective added together is not sufficient.

Only a deeper perspective that accommodates both and relates them in terms greater than either is sufficient.

That deeper perspective is intersubjective and phenomenological, and it is already well on its way to wrenching control of the world from the hands of the objective minds who have dominated the practical world since before Newton, and also the romantic reactionaries who have defined themselves against this tendency who celebrate intuition and feeling at the expense of the rational.

User experience, inside-out branding, new approaches to “human resources” (a term whose days are numbered if there ever was one) such as ROWE, a new appreciation of the importance of “why” (as opposed to “how” and “what”)… It’s taking over because we’re realizing that our biggest problems are subjective, not objective.

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Incumbents fall when they fight the new war with the old strategies that won them their predominance. And that’s what they do, and history’s convection current perpetually churns down the old, and churns up the new.

To see a dark room, the first thing we usually try to do is turn on the lights, or open the windows.

Sometimes we have to feel around in the dark to find a light switch, which works best if we already know something about the room’s layout, and about what kind of switches and window latches we can expect to find (otherwise we might not recognize what we are looking for even when we feel it). In this kind of case we rarely stand in one place. We walk around the room, and explore it by feel before we can explore it by sight.

Sometimes, if we are lucky enough to have (or discover in our groping) a flashlight or lamp, we can direct light to different areas of the room, in search of the room’s own light sources. If such light sources do not exist, or if their light is dim or casts dark shadows, we will explore the room by the light of our own lamp.

Generally speaking, we prefer to see a room by its own light, and failing that we examine it by our own light. And if no light is available, we are forced to explore it by feel. And often we treat these preferences as discrete modes. We EITHER find the light and look around, OR we just point our flashlight at various points in the room to see what’s there, OR we feel around. But the most thorough examination involves all three: seeing the room from its usual perspectives in its usual mode of illumination, looking at the room from as many perspectives as possible, illuminating the shadowy areas with our own light, touching and experimenting with the objects of the room. Further, we can move these objects around, turn them in our hands or walk around them, viewing them from various angles.

And then a whole other world of possibilities opens when you of viewing images or maps of the room made by others, or hearing about the room from others. And nearly all of what was outlined above presupposes knowledge of rooms, windows, lights, etc. But now the metaphor is fuzzing up, so we’re probably violating its terms of use…

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I think what I’m doing here is feeling out a possibility of a formal relationship between metaphors of illumination, metaphors of perspective, metaphors of uncovering, metaphors of feeling out. I’ve had a vague sense, in the form of slight anxiety around some of my own favorite terms (perspective, horizon, insight, clarification), that perhaps I’ve been conflating or confusing concepts of understanding. I’ve been really irritable about the use of the word insight (which I think is perspectival knowledge on a subject’s sense of objectivity) for gaining facts about other people (which treats people as objects with attributes). And I have a hunch that clarifying these relationships will help me understand the variety of research methods better.

There’s a big difference between matters that are not clearly understood because nobody has looked at the matter closely or systematically enough, versus matters that have been looked at very closely but not from an angle that reveals what is most relevant or productive, versus matters that are essentially discovery of an angle of view versus knowing about the objects viewed from that angle (and I think this is the essential difference between qualitative and quantitative research), versus matters that are being overshadowed by considerations that perhaps obscure what most needs seeing.

Dig?

WARNING: This post is a process of understanding, not a product of understanding. That means it will cause anxiety, not relieve it. I am opening questions I do not know how to close.

Isn’t openness exciting, though? Isn’t openness liberating? Hell no, openness is not exciting or liberating. It is oppressive and dreadful until it is closed again, and closed better.

True openness allows the primordial chaos to flood back in and submerge us in dread. This is the infant’s element. It is what makes babies cry when left alone in a dark room. A philosopher’s proclivity to open what best remains closed — to welcome back chaos — is the real reason philosophy is hated by those who already know enough. The experience of being born is dreadful and none of us want to relive it, but reliving birth is the very business of philosophy.

What makes us feel liberated is to re-ask a question whose answer has overwhelmed us or paralyzed us or depressed us, and to re-answer it more compactly or more productively or affirmingly. (I’m reminded of Thomas Kuhn’s criteria of theory choice: Accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness.) We feel liberated when we replace unsatisfactory answers with good ones. And if it seems that we like to re-open questions, it is only for this.

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Some metaphors for the unknown:

• concealed
• disguised
• unnoticed
• microscopic
• dark
• in darkness
• invisible
• distant
• beyond (over the horizon)
• forgotten

Many of these metaphors (like metaphors in general) are visual.

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For any particular event of vision to occur a number of conditions must be met:

• a subject of vision (the seer)
• a capacity for vision (sight)
• a medium of vision (light)
• an object of vision (the seen)
• a situation in which all the conditions are present in specific relation to one another

The situation in which an event of vision occurs contains a number of relationships:

• the situation is finite; it is understood that things are outside the situation
• the subject seeing is characterized by possessing sight (to count them as separate — suspicious?)
• the subject has an objective presence in the situation he sees: he is situated as an object among the objects of the situation
• the subject seeing relates to the objects seen in a perspective, where closer objects are larger, and more distant objects are smaller, and the most distant objects disappear
• in relation to the seer and to peer objects, objects closer to the seer may obscure more distant objects
• light also has an objective presence in the situation, in that some object or objects in the situation emits the light by which things are seen
• light relates to the objects seen in illumination, where objects closer to the light source are brighter, and more distant objects are darker, and the most distant objects are no longer visible
• in relation to a light source and to peer objects, objects closer to the light source may cast shadows on more distant objects (and this includes the seer as object)
• multiple light sources may illuminate shadows from other light sources
• objects may reflect light onto other objects, and behave both as light sources and objects (and this includes the seer as object)
• the seer and sight is always one; where light sources and objects are always at least one, but potentially multiple

Of course, some objects in an event of seeing are respected as fellow seers, but strictly speaking, to “see” this into the metaphor is to confuse it. A fellow seer is to be heard, and what one hears might change what one sees.

Some truths can be possessed, mastered, memorized and remembered.

Some truths are silent companions. They are always there for us, and, when needed, without a word, leap to action.

Some some truths come and go as they please. We can try to recall them, but they do not always answer, and when they do return to us, it is the furthest thing from an act of obedience. We invite them to return. We keep the door open and the room clean. We welcome them home, dote on them, and hope they choose to stay with us.

Cynicism is the sound of the loveless whistling in the dark.

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To use one’s own direct experience to prove the nonexistence of something certainly succeeds in proving the nonexistence of something.

If you can show that your intuition will bear fruit, you can win the support of the community to develop it. If you can win the support of the community to develop it, your intuition will bear fruit.

If you can prove your value, you will win the conditions you need to be valuable. If you can win the conditions you need to be valuable, you will prove your value.

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A harassed mind can produce ideas of a certain kind, but it will be unable to produce others. A harassed mind thinks about many things at once, and it concentrates only in small intense and disconnected bursts. It is like an mental factory fill of mental assembly lines, which can be stopped and started by a skillful manager. The products sit patiently, ready for the next part to be added as time permits, until they arrives at the end of the line, in finished form, as specced. Halfway through its course, a product is half-assembled. Atomistic ideas are produced in this manner, piece by piece, systematically.

Concepts are different. A concept is conceived all at once in a burst of insight. A concept maintains its wholeness throughout its development as it self-articulates under its own generative forces into differentiated organs. Its struggle for viability cannot be stopped and started at will. It develops like a fetus, not like a machine.

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A harassed mind produces only atomistic ideas.

Many people who naturally think atomistically see no problem with universal harassment. It’s unfair to subject some people to harassment, while others are permitted to concentrate and dream up ideas. And to be realistic, while holistic concepts are often inspired and inspiring, business rarely demands inspiration as much as it does efficiency, predictability, flexibility, speed, repeatability. Or is that just the case because business has been dominated by atomistic thinkers?

If someone keeps finishing your sentences for you: 1) He might be trying to show you that you’re not alone in seeing things the way you do; or 2) he might be trying to understand you into harmless redundancy; or 3) he might be trying to bend the alien to the familiar; or 4) he may be trying to speak the familiar over the alien and silence it; or 5) he might be racing you to the insight; or 6) he might have forgotten everything in the world but the thought.

Altruism is a parody of magnanimity.

Buber, on the social vs the interhuman:

It is usual to ascribe what takes place between men to the social realm, thereby blurring a basically important line of division between two essentially different areas of human life. I myself, when I began nearly fifty years ago to find my own bearings in the knowledge of society, making use of the then unknown concept of the interhuman, made the same error. From that time it became increasingly clear to me that we have to do here with a separate category of our existence, even a separate dimension, to use a mathematical term, and one with which we are so familiar that its peculiarity has hitherto almost escaped us. Yet insight into its peculiarity is extremely important not only for our thinking, but also for our living.

We may speak of social phenomena wherever the life of a number of men, lived with one another, bound up together, brings in its train shared experiences and reactions. But to be thus bound up together means only that each individual existence is enclosed and contained in a group existence. It does not mean that between one member and another of the group there exists any kind of personal relation. They do feel that they belong together in a way that is, so to speak, fundamentally different from every possible belonging together with someone outside the group. And there do arise, especially in the life of smaller groups, contacts which frequently favour the birth of individual relations, but, on the other hand, frequently make it more difficult. In no case, however, does membership in a group necessarily involve an existential relation between one member and another. It is true that there have been groups in history which included highly intensive and intimate relations between two of their members — as, for instance, in the homosexual relations among the Japanese Samurai or among Doric warriors — and these were countenanced for the sake of the stricter cohesion of the group. But in general it must be said that the leading elements in groups, especially in the later course of human history, have rather been inclined to suppress the personal relation in favour of the purely collective element. Where this latter element reigns alone or is predominant, men feel themselves to be carried by the collectivity, which lifts them out of loneliness and fear of the world and lostness. When this happens — and for modern man it is an essential happening — the life between person and person seems to retreat more and more before the advance of the collective. The collective aims at holding in check the inclination to personal life. It is as though those who are bound together in groups should in the main be concerned only with the work of the group and should turn to the personal partners, who are tolerated by the group, only in secondary meetings.

Nietzsche, on the same insight:

Dialogue. — A dialogue is the perfect conversation because everything that the one person says acquires its particular color, sound, its accompanying gesture in strict consideration of the other person to whom he is speaking; it is like letter-writing, where one and the same man shows ten ways of expressing his inner thoughts, depending on whether he is writing to this person or to that. In a dialogue, there is only one single refraction of thought: this is produced by the partner in conversation, the mirror in which we want to see our thoughts reflected as beautifully as possible. But how is it with two, or three, or more partners? There the conversation necessarily loses something of its individualizing refinement; the various considerations clash, cancel each other out; the phrase that pleases the one, does not accord with the character of the other. Therefore, a man interacting with several people is forced to fall back upon himself, to present the facts as they are, but rob the subject matter of that scintillating air of humanity that makes a conversation one of the most agreeable things in the world. Just listen to the tone in which men interacting with whole groups of men tend to speak; it is as if the ground bass of all speech were: “That is who I am; that is what I say; now you think what you will about it!” For this reason, clever women whom a man has met in society are generally remembered as strange, awkward, unappealing: it is speaking to and in front of many people that robs them of all intelligent amiability and turns a harsh light only on their conscious dependence on themselves, their tactics, and their intention to triumph publicly; while the same women in a dialogue become females again and rediscover their mind’s gracefulness.

Nietzsche makes a lot more general sense and seems a little less sexist if you decode his comments on women with the aid of this Rosetta stone (from the preface of Beyond Good and Evil): “Supposing truth is a woman–what then?”

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This distinction is completely relevant to brand, not only externally, but also internally.

Comparing the experience of two people in the same situation, some elements of the experience will be identical, some different but compatible, some different and conflicting.

Those elements of experience that are reliably identical across experiences are interpreted as attributes of objects, and we call objective. Those elements that are reliably different across experiences we call subjective, and are interpreted as attributes of subjects.

In the end, however, all comparisons are made by subjects between subjects, through the essentially intersubjective medium of language, and they deal with experiences had by subjects. Objectivity is a subset of subjectivity with a very blurry edge and perhaps nothing but blurry edge around a point-of-approach suggesting a metaphysical existence. And other subjects are essentially different from one’s own. We are comparing unlike beings as though they are like, through language and phenomenal reference points — so the subjectivity of others is also a point-of-approach suggesting a metaphysical existence.

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To think of objectivity as somehow more real than subjectivity, and subjectivity as more real than intersubjectivity is to take what is furthest for what is nearest, and it has disastrous practical implications, as does taking objectivity to be unreal and invalid.

When we read a mystery we try to discern the essential truth of the mysterious situation from a smattering of details. We begin tentatively, with a hypothesis or set of hypotheses which orders our understanding and, more subtly, through the uncanny influence of relevance, our perceptions. Some details are regarded as significant, others as trivial, and some fail to register at all until much later.

As the mystery develops, anomalies accumulate; things stop adding up; we suspect that our failure to make sense of things might have less to do with absence of clues, than it does with misreading the significance of existing clues. The investigation becomes reinvestigation. We try on different interpretive schema, look at the picture from different angles, ask ourselves what understanding develops if some innocent-seeming character is hiding something, or if some suspicious character is actually benign or benevolent. We find our allegiances shifting, and with it the balance of relative certainties.

Eventually, an epiphany occurs. Often it comes in the form of a crystalizing paradox which changes everything at once, as a whole and in every detail.

We can also experience this same strange phenomenon — the hermeneutic shift — reading mystery novels, though the effect is mostly confined to the experience of the book itself. In reading real-life mysteries, the world itself is transfigured, ourselves with it.