"There is something I do not know, the knowing of which could change
everything."
...
"Bird
is to air as fish is to
water
as man is to himSelf."
... anonymous
"The tree leaves, the ocean waves,
the universe
peoples."
...
Alan Watts,
deploying plural nouns "leaves", "waves", and "peoples" as
third-person verbs
You're driving along
the freeway,
enjoying the passing scenery. Your exit is coming up, so you turn on
your blinker. You also peer into the side
mirror
to see if there are any
cars
near you. There aren't. So you begin your lane change, and as you do,
you're shocked out of your reverie by the sudden blaring of
a car
horn, very loud, very near, too close for comfort, accompanied by the
sounds of tires and brakes squealing from
the car
you now see right next to you - as if it just appeared out of
nowhere. But no, it was there all the time. You just didn't see
it. It was in your blind spot. You didn't even
think
to look there.
Here's another example of a blind spot. You hold a mug of coffee by the
ear and, extending your arm, reach out to give it to a friend. Before
you let her take it, you ask her to describe in detail what she sees.
She describes the glaze, the mug's size, its color, everything she sees
about it. "Anything else?" you ask. She describes a few more features.
"Anything else?" you ask. "No, that's it" she says. Then you turn the
mug around, and say "Oh, and the ear? What about the ear? You didn't
say anything about the ear.". The ear had been hidden in what is also
her blind spot. She didn't even
think
to look there either.
There's what we know. There's what we know that we know. And
there's what we know that we don't know. Then there's what we
don't know. And there's what we don't know that we don't know. A
"blind spot" is when we don't know that we don't know. Blind
spots, like when there's nothing in the side
mirror
or when a coffee mug has no ear, have an enormous impact on the way we
live our lives
epistemologically.
Our blind spots have been hard-wired into our
epistemologicalmachinery.
They're the areas of our lives in which we presume (ie take it for
granted) that we're acting freely, spontaneously, and with full
awareness when in fact we're constrained, robotic, and unconscious,
with very limited
freedom to be
and
freedom
to
act.
Our blind spots are self-deceptive. And because they're uncomfortable
to confront, we tend to ignore them. Ignoring them perpetuates our
constrained, robotic, and unconscious behavior.
The value in distinguishing blind spots in
the work of
transformation
(being willing to inquire into them, being brave enough to distinguish
them, and being honest enough to tell
the truth
about them) can not be overstated. If I were to choose just one thing
to designate as the biggest impediment to living life transformed, it
would surely be undistinguished blind spots, undistinguished because I
haven't told
the full truth
about them, or because I'm hesitant to drill down into the behavioral
origins of my blind spots. Blind spots are what we don't know that we
don't know. Distinguishing them calls for more than merely a cursory
interest
in how we're run today, blinded by unresolved incidents in the past.
You need an
unflinching
inquiry into blind spots to distinguish them.
The first blind spots I ever distinguished, were that it was really
my relationship with my
father
that set the stage for my relationships with all men, and
my relationship with my
mother
that set the stage for my relationships with all women.
A guy
wasn't just my brewski drinking buddy. He was
my father
as my brewski drinking buddy. A woman wasn't just my love-interest.
She was
my mother
as my love-interest. You can
imagine
how well that worked for me! The impact of blind spots really has a lot
less to do with
what actually happened
in the past, and a lot more to do with the
tyranny
(if you will) of blind spots. From then on
when something happened,
like some dysfunction in
my life,
I
began
cutting to the chase immediately, asking directly "What's the blind
spot here? What is it I am not seeing?". The mostly
ignored impact of living with undistinguished / unresolved blind spots
could become
a thesis
in and of itself.
Postscript:
The presentation, delivery, and style of
The Knowing Of Which: On Blind Spots
are all my own work.
The ideas recreated in
The Knowing Of Which: On Blind Spots
were first originated, distinguished, and articulated by
Werner Erhard.
