What I know

Is that I don't know a lot

When I was in High School I took a class from Mr. Unsoeld called Social Issues. I think I also took one called Civics from him… but I think I learned this in Social Issues….

He took a piece of chalk, walked up to the chalkboard and drew a circle. He then said, “The area inside this circle, this black space, represents what you know. The space outside this circle.  All this space and on into infinity, represents what you do NOT know. Now, the important part, this thin line that forms the circle at the intersection of what you know and don’t know. That is what you know you don’t know. That is a gray area of space where you are aware there are things you don’t know yet. When you are a small child your circle is small. You don’t know much and you therefore don’t think there’s much you don’t know. As you get older your circle grows and you become more aware of what you don’t know. In short.  

The more you know, the more you know  you don’t know.”

I made a fancier graphic and added to it. There’s what I know in the middle. Then there’s an area of things I will know eventually. There’s an area of things I might know some day. I might even be aware they exist but never know it. And then there’s a whole boat load of stuff I will never know. I won’t ever even be aware that I don’t know it. 

I’ve always liked this concept of human knowledge. 

As I’ve grown older I’ve realized that there’s a major problem with it. It’s theoretical and it assumes that everything we learn or “know” is truth.  What if we learn something but it is not true?

The inner part of the graphic might end up looking like this instead…

Thinking we know something really muddles up the whole thing. If we think we know something but it ends up not being true what does that mean about everything else we’ve learned based on that untruth? How do we cleanse that information and ensure it’s true? Sounds hard. Maybe impossible.

And therein lies a big problem. 

He he… see what I did there? Lies a big problem. Lies. A. Big. Problem.

People like to lie. Deceive. Our reasons are many.  My tendency to lie is pretty much limited to conflict avoidance. I’m not likely to lie at all if it’s for some sort of personal gain. Not my style. But sometimes I just don’t want to deal with a whole big story… or the truth is just not nice. or it  might seem irrelevant… often it just becomes a lie of omission. 

As a kid I did lie to avoid getting in trouble. 

I remember one time when I lied to my mother. I had been playing in the backyard. I had this long thin stick and was throwing it like a javelin across the yard. One time it went off course and hit the bird bath that my mom really liked. It was an effective javelin and not only knocked the top off the stand but poked a hole in it so it wouldn’t hold water anymore - ruining it. 

I put the top back on the bird bath. I hid my stick. I walked away.

Sometime later my mother noticed that the bird bath was no longer holding water and checked it out. She wondered out loud what had happened. I said casually, “maybe a bird did it?”. 

She looked thoughtful for a moment and went on with life.  I think they managed to patch the bird bath.

A few months later I told my mom the truth. She was like, “oh, okay”. No conflict. No trouble. Just my own inner guilt. That can be pretty effective. 

Some folks will lie to get whatever they want. 

About a year ago I wrote a post, Lay lie lei about how I had gone on a dating app and met a fabulous woman that seemed to connect with me on a super deep level and I had high hopes of meeting her and, yeah, well, you get the idea. So along comes the time to meet and we’re setting up a time and place and I’m about to drive 80 miles to see her and she texts, “oh, btw, can you pick me up some gift cards on the way. I really need them and I can’t get to the store.” OH! DECEPTION! ALL A RUSE!

I thought I knew what was going on. I wanted to believe it was a fabulous woman. I wanted to believe there was this person that connected with me on many levels. The reality was the villain had probably just fed my substack writings into an AI and spewed out a bunch of stuff they knew I’d like. I’m a tech guy and I had been deceived by tech. So embarrassing. 

Sigh.

What do I know?

Right now I feel like there are a lot of people that have been misled. Deceived. Maybe because they are hearing things they want to hear. And there will be a rude awakening when it all becomes clear. 

But I just had my own rude awakening a few days ago when the people of our country voted for a person I perceive of as full of hatred and lies… A person who, it seems to me, will actually do the exact opposite of what most people want. I thought we were passed that. And now I am scared. 

But what do I know? Maybe I am the one in my own little echo chamber bubble listening to my own words bounce back at me as truths. Each one reinforcing what I already believe to be true. Reinforcing my fear of what is to come.

I fear for humanity. I fear for the state of the planet. I fear the water rising to our knees and being battered by severe weather as we argue with each other and hate each other and don’t even see what’s actually going on. The glass house we live in together cannot contain the rocks we throw.

Sigh. What do I know? really? 

I just hope there are others wondering what is actually true all the time. 

I just hope we find humanity and remember that we are all here living. Living together. Making choices the best we can on our own and that part of life is making those choices. And sometimes, we make mistakes. But then, we need to realize it is part of life. Apologize. Move on. 

I just hope the choices we make are not out of hate. 

A story concept

When I was married to Nicolle we went to a Baptist General Conference church in Washington. It was fairly liberal but had some pretty intense Bible study sessions. I enjoyed it for the philosophical conversations.

I remember discussing purgatory and how sin would be burned from us as we entered heaven. It would have to be burned away because everything in heaven must be pure. Sounded pretty unpleasant to me. Why would I want to subject myself to that? 

I started thinking about the choices people make and how there are some people that are obviously really good people, some people that are obviously really bad and then a whole bunch in the middle. What about them? What would really happen to them?

So I started to write a story. The basic concept was that one day, in sort of like a rapture, all the people that were obviously going to go to heaven would just POOF, disappear. And all the people that would obviously go to hell would just POOF, disappear. 

My thought was - if the extremes, the most powerful personalities, were removed, would others move to fill those gaps? Would there be people that recognized there was a need that had to be filled and would they step up, or would they remain in the middle. Noncommittal?

The story would be about a few individuals as they moved either toward being better - filling the gap of the “saints” that had left and those that moved toward evil - filling the other gap.

I never finished the story.  Turns out the folks in the middle aren’t particularly extraordinary to write about.

What is my part? Your part? 

But now, I’m thinking about this story again due to the events of this past week with the election.

Conflict is coming. One way or another. I think I have been living in the middle. Have you been in the middle? Will I step up when I need to?  Will you?  Can we be the light? 

A quick test…

Which one of these is the truth? Pictures taken within 30 seconds of each other.