We die; nothing is going to change that fact. A description of the unknown quality of that fact has occupied the greatest minds of our world from Cave Painting to String Theory with a vast array of assertions and guarantees made; the one thing that seems to be clear, we are not very comfortable with our ignorance. The dilemma is that much of our existence depends on us knowing something which impairs the incentive for getting comfortable with our ignorance; further complicated by those believing we are ignorant; those who want to make us ignorant, and those who remain willing to share their ignorance. I search for the latter, for they are more fun to be with when exploring the world; I feel safer when others don’t hide things, which is not to be confused with someone making declarations of self-importance - a good sign of a lack of self-awareness. Why for example does someone drive slow in the fast lane? It is common sense to not interfere, but like leaving a shopping cart in the middle of an isle in the market is common sense which it turns out is not all that common. I find there is a wide spectrum for reasons for most lapses in common sense from deliberate to oblivious. Oblivious obstruction is more akin to the physics of an avalanche - it do or it don’t; where a deliberate obstruction has the overtone of cruelty, meanness or spite.
As a young squire these nuances were lost on me and duly believed sharing logic would remake the world. I modeled behavior as one does coming from a family of teachers - opening doors for ladies, making way for others in a hurry. Not extraordinary gestures, more gallantries made quaint by ruling class doctrine and demands that correlate clocks with time. Still the plan seemed manageable and cost little, but my ignorance did not prepare me for the intransigence of the vulgar nor the subconscious demand for cruelty prompted by the media rainbow maker and its illusion that caboose of the “income inequity train” can actually be caught. At that tender age I was still trying to reconcile the noble fictions of youth with the hypocrisy of the “greatest generation” and its ham fisted assault on the sovereign nation of Viet Nam - a nation the size of Delaware. It seems now in retrospect that the armistice of WWII included surrender by America’s bankers to the Fuhrer’s Chancellors in exchange for instruction manuals for the capture of a democracy - but that’s another essay. We’re trying to find a better understanding of ignorance for the danger it represents to our collective future. Today there are extremely powerful well financed individuals/entities spending great amounts of money cultivating adjustable levels of ignorance for the entire world population. Though it has always been thus, it is much easier to accomplish using the internet and people’s natural inclination to want to know, or believe what they know - still a monkey see monkey do world - plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes.
Great sages from Socrates to Lao Tzu have stated knowledge is not external but an internal awareness, not a set of laws to be codified and memorized as with “no child left behind” and its reliance on rote memorization or the outcome based model of “teaching to the test.” Yet if the sages were accurate and it is what we each know to be true in our hearts that is important, what of the deadly consequences of our information/secrecy based economy? We have children mathematicians/metadata analysts claiming the capacity to define the deeper recesses of the human heart based on that person’s keystrokes. And we are putting the noose around our necks with many people taking and believing the results of the ubiquitous internet personality tests proliferating on interactive but not media screen? People wouldn’t be taking the tests if they had been trained to hear their own hearts; the same truism which says the world may only be understood except by observation and that tentatively - “believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.” How then to merge the perceptions from the senses with the only knowledge we have any control over - our own hearts and minds. I see monster armies bombing families into submission using my tax dollar. I object strenuously to what I see while begging to be corrected with logic - it changes little, but I feel better. I require greater discipline to manage the feeling of futility which result from leaning into such misery. Like the young swain modeling behavior, I want to believe such havoc can be arrested through concerted open discussion, but I am still ignorant if only more so save one lesson that was tattooed on the inside of my skull after not one but many drunken escapades - the only control I have is over myself, and that not at all when allowed in the company of beautiful women - a clue, they are all beautiful.
Ignorance is hard to explain and impossible to obscure. In my travels I’ve met those who believe their power is baed on knowledge they have and you don’t, which to my thinking makes them ignorant. There are those who seek knowledge by sharing what they don’t know, Michel Montaigne for example developed the concept of essay, which means to attempt or aim. It may be that our world’s current destructive balance is suspended between these two states knowing and not knowing. Lao Tzu said in effect: if you want to enlighten the world, awaken all the parts of yourself, and if you want to eliminate suffering in the world, eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself; the greatest gift you can give the world is self transformation. Using the logic of Lao Tzu someone wishing to hide the truth can only hide what they believe to be knowledge or information - the con (We can’t tell you what we do with what we know about you from our database, because then you would understand how little we know about what we are doing.) - and I know this is gonna piss off some seekers of truth, but (we can’t make graffiti clear, because then you’d know how lazy we are about learning the long history of human-crafted, universe-provided beauty and the real struggle formulate a finer form.) The seeker of knowledge can be recognized by what s/he doesn’t know, not much different than I feel trying to make this aspect of the process for thinking clear; but it boils done to an engineering argument 30 years ago: Russell P____ who was made physically ill by my to-this-day belief that knowledge is infinite rather than finite.
In the final analysis it may be useful to cogitate on a statement by HH the Dalai Lama: “when you believe everything is someone else’s fault you will suffer a lot.” We all know in our hearts, at least those those blessed with empathy ( 99% of the world’s population ) how important love and nurturing are. The havoc of our world can only be attributed to the sad truth we have not loved enough, and I place myself at the top of that list. Writing 5 essays on the Four Riders of the Apocalypse seems a peculiar way to love or transform oneself for the better, yet like deep a consideration of dying will never alter the inexorable decay life, just the act of staring into the abyss is preferable to any nagging suspicion that maybe 70 virgins is like all the other bribes from the hated Mullah, or where the vindictive Vicar threatened you with Hell being same as when he threatened the secretary her paycheck in exchange for sex. My sense is the abyss and terror of death will be like Leonard Cohen’s “something old, but always new,” or even Bob Dylan’s “greasy trail;” whatever form it takes I feel better for having sought some light of knowledge from my own inside as to why there is suffering in a world with so many human beings that know what it is to love and be loved but aren’t. I am as okay as I can be with that choice; unless you are not loving because you have abdicated your heart to a doctrine or abandoned it to the will of another - be that romantic or religious, for anyone that would demand sovereign over the only gage we as humans have for discerning fact from fiction is suspect, and conversely anyone that asks me to looks as deeply into my heart to know the truth of existence is someone or something I will stand by even give up my life to for no other reason than to be safe for just that instant in the continuum.
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