Month: February 2026

Insight As the Deletion of Positive Knowledge, and How that Heals the World

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It’s not “knowledge” that I’m sharing but encounters with absences of knowledge.

It’s very difficult to have any positive knowledge of the world. New evidence is constantly calling everything we thought we knew into question. It’s far easier to be certain about what we get wrong, or what we don’t know.

Even here, however, the questions remain somewhat superficial, because even if we question our knowledge of specfic issues, we hardly ever question Knowledge itself (or examine the creative or downright fictional assumptions that underlie knowledge). We tend to see through our certainties only in flashes. So, at irregular intervals, holes in the fabric (in the yarns) are pierced by insights. And at present, we seem compelled to re-connect these holes (or dots), in order to restore confidence in the fabrications and blanket assumptions to which we still cling for security.

But by now, the yarns that filter our vision are patchwork quilts with ragged and disintegrating edges. After each tear in our belief systems, we have rushed to repair the damage. And now all the patches – all the efforts to hide contradictions, hypocrisies and white lies as a way of extending the life of the yarn – are disintegrating faster than they can be repaired.

For many, this can induce panic at the loss of certainty, and the exposure of an emptiness behind most forms of identity. So, some are intent on restoring the “greatness” of the old fabric in some regressive revolution.

Or, some will discern just enough holes in the fabric to propose an entirely new yarn that would resolve some of these problems. Perhaps socialism (my preference, given the alternatives), or religion, or communism or fascism or a new capitalism, or a panopticonic AI state run by a self-described elite hiding in some redwood groves in northern California.

These are all attempts to re-engineer a better fabric of perception to cover everything that exceeds the map. We are sticking to the maps, as though certainty was a necessity. Or, as if moments of uncertainty (or wondering and learning) are only holes that need to be filled again.

Maybe what we’re experiencing is no more confusing than what a caterpillar experiences as its cocoon deteriorates. But we’re like caterpillars who keep re-building the disintegrating cocoon of Thought (of rational planning and top-down control) that has (arguably) served us so well in our development till now.

But insights are damaging to any fabric of belief woven too tightly.

An insight tends to be associated with a “new idea” (a new fabrication). But an insight is mainly an erasure. It’s the negative force that removes a beam from the eyes (which allows new thoughts to form).

And our culture has never had a sufficient insight into the fabric of thought itself; only into particular forms of that fabric.

So, what is an insight if it isn’t used to fill the hole with a new idea?

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Original Negative Geography Intro and Part I from year 2000

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I re-read something I wrote 26 years ago and realized I’d hardly learned a damn thing since then. At any rate, it puts me in the awkward position of being slightly jealous of my younger self, even though I’m still convinced that this older self could show that whipper-snapper a thing or two if he had the decency to listen to me. Nevertheless, the mild and somewhat astonished envy remains, although it burns low because it’s too absurd.

The jealousy is a passing twinge that I’m magnifying and holding steady for a moment. It’s not “jealousy” of the writing. It’s the suspicion that I’ve lost (or, at least not embodied any better than I already did) the vantage point that was my original inspiration; one that joins laughter and learning, rather than merely adding laughter as a decorative element.

But I was mildly surprised that this younger fellow’s remarks came solidly from a place I feel I’m still barely unfolding in daily life.

Maybe, this reaction shows how quickly my opinions of myself depreciate the instant they land in the past, even the immediate past. Either that or it measures the ever-blossoming conceit of someone who thinks he’s always smarter than he was a moment ago.

But the past self doesn’t even exist anymore. So, the courtroom is mine (for the moment). And I confess under oath that a moment ago I actually tripped over my own shoelace on the way upstairs. And now I’m writing about it with calm clarity. Hence, I’m always improving (but never actually getting anywhere, resulting in a hung jury).

Nevertheless, the thing displays something I might have lost a little. And because I’ve returned to the topic of the inner voice over the last few essays, it feels relevant again.

And because otherwise the thing will just languish in the bottom drawer of a desk until the new owners upon my death throw it in the dumpster, I’m giving the thing an airing. (And leaving as it was written, no edits. Not even replacing the generic “he” with a “they”. It’s what it was.

And remember that this is a humor thing, but that’s not the same as being frivolous. Non-frivolous humor. Seriousness without any need for furrowed brows.

[There were five parts, but I think these were the two better parts.]

———————

NEGATIVE GEOGRAPHY:  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ERROR

                “And I said, with rapture, Here is something I can study all my life and never understand.”

                                                                                                            — Molloy (S. Beckett)

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Briefly Touching a Third Rail: Footnote 2 to “What Is Self-Knowledge?”

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Now, this is a third rail in society, so let me place my metrical feet carefully here.

I think everyone has a right to experiment and poke and prod themselves and change their genders and do whatever they want to their bodies. It’s nobody else’s business.

But the inquiry into Identity is my business, since I’m a human being in the stanchions of various constricting identities like everyone else. And I am also free to wonder about all this, because identity makes everyone a little crazy, as far as I can see. I’d say that a conviction of identity is the root of all war. And there are obsessions that develop, which can even lead to a psychosis where people insist on removing their own healthy arms and legs, because it doesn’t conform to an obsessive picture they hold of themselves. So even the most intense feeling of conviction isn’t proof of a necessity.

And there’s a lot of conflict in our unsettled relationship between mind and body. To me, it feels like a violence or hatred of myself, whenever I force this body to conform to an image or story of who I am; rather than allowing the disjointed image, story and body to accept their unique and contradictory realities and reunite as they are in genuine self-acceptance.

I think human fluidity in every direction is normal, creative and irrepressible. Hence, I claim we are like octopi or squid.

As I said in the main essay, the sense of Self is very convincing, but it’s not true individuality. The “I” is merely a rehearsal of how others should see me. It’s chained to others’ opinions. Whereas, true individuality can never be pinned down in any objective or conclusive sense by anyone else, including myself. This would be like trying to stuff a bear in a parakeet’s cage. We always exceed our own expectations if given half a chance.

But in trying to pin down our identities, all we end up doing is shifting from one combination of socially imposed definitions to another, and then calling that shift from the old prison to the new prison, freedom. I don’t see those shifts as fluidity, but as efforts to cage ourselves for the sake of a false security and fake, conditional love.

Maybe we’re all simply afraid of the loneliness of being truly unique.

If this culture loved its children, it wouldn’t make a problem out of natural human creativity and autonomy. Indigenous cultures have no problem with any of this — they don’t tell others how to live. But our supposedly advanced society prefers human beings made in the images of machines, forced to conform to the rigid 1’s and 0’s of an autocratic morality, with simple, categorical, machine-readable identities. We don’t trust our children to unfold as they will. The society wants consistent shapes that can serve as cogs in the inorganic machine. We are trained to serve the machine, not vice versa.

We don’t trust the unique human form we already are. But the honest human being is beautiful, rebellious and good, no matter how disjointed and out of place this unloving society makes us feel.

Now is the time for this powerful being to overthrow the machine.

Love to you.

Empire Falls: Footnote to the Essay, “What Is Self-Knowledge?”

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“A bitter wind blows through the country
A hard rain falls on the sea
If terror comes without a warning
There must be something we don’t see
What fire begets this fire?
Like torches thrown into the straw
If no one asks, then no one answers
That’s how every empire falls” — John Prine (“That’s How Every Empire Falls”)

Maybe the scientific revolution (for all its magnificent insights and newfound capacities) re-imagined the human being as a kind of inanimate billiard ball bouncing mechanically along a chain of meaningless cause and effect.

This was the only Grand Narrative that science could offer the individual. A brief, inexplicable eruption from total non-animacy, which ends in non-animacy yet again.

This revolution freed the individual from the biting dogmas of religion, but left the individual feeling like a surplus ball bearing bouncing around in some inexplicable clockwork; which had the effect of leaving the non-scientist (the new lay person) desperate to find purchase in the open-ended abyss of an isolated “me,” which was all that remained in the absence of religion and monarchy (and NO, this is not a lament). But as a result, perhaps the 18th and 19th century citizen (or at least European or American citizen) colonized the world in its need to distract itself from the absence of meaningful identity that the sudden withdrawal of old certainties provoked.

I mean, the 19th century “American” mind was optimistic, because it was experiencing the “singularity” of a logarithmic upswing in personal and national power in the rising tide of colonialism, thanks to genocide and slavery.

As the empire collapses, the urge to regress towards that “old time” faith in kings and gods and tribes grows more desperate, and less euphoric. Hence, there’s a desire to return to the familiar hellscape of genocide and enslavement so as to give those who feel this way a boost of self-esteem.

So, perhaps the “rugged individual”, and the “self-made man” of an eager 19th century America became the resume-building, careerist, self-branding, cynical and self-obsessed tweeting global consumer of today. We’ve all been colonized.

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What Is Self Knowledge?

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1) Self-knowledge as a positive list of characteristics


How do I know myself?

I begin by knowing myself as an objective list of characteristics: Likes, dislikes, opinions, habits, values, skills, professions, political orientations, and every other quality imaginable.

I also know myself reluctantly as a list of shadow characteristics, which others often perceive first: impatience, clumsiness, self-obsessions, talking to myself even when others are in the room, a hypocritical love of boxing, etc.

There’s a necessity for these differently sourced lists of self-knowledge. If I don’t notice a tendency to be selfish, lazy, thoughtless, you name it, then self-knowledge is distorted in the preservation of an illusion.

In fact, I hear in my own brain (and from what I derive from others’ brains) something similar to government propaganda in the way it defends and justifies itself by referencing selectively edited memories (or fake news), in order to preserve the illusion of a stable and presidential “me” who does no wrong.

If I’m rolling an issue over and over again in my mind (as I tend to do), then some image of myself must have been made to wobble from its pedestal. Even if I’m self-righteously convinced of my own innocence, the emotional and mental energy dedicated to preserving this image indicates a wobble.

The voice is like a press-secretary and press corps rolled into one. And I hardly notice the exhaustion this causes, because it’s standard practice in this culture: conversing with non-existent people in order to convince imaginary people that this list of qualities remains accurate and impeccable.

Or, call it an effective air-defense system that shoots down any speck of honest evidence undermining the falsely idealized Self it claims to be.

But now and then some honest revelation hits home despite this diligence. And the accidental surrender to reality generates a soft breeze of sanity, which cleanses the air momentarily from the fumes of bullshit that the brain produced during the course of the day.

But almost immediately I’ll start downplaying the impact of this moment of truth, trying to steady the wobble or clean up the damage to the fallen icon. And I’ll employ a clever tactic to do this — acknowledging a portion of the exposed corruption by saying something like, “I wasn’t being myself” or “that’s not who I really am”.

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A Ramble on How Too Much Identity and Too Little Self-Knowledge Contributes to our Collective Suicide: Preface to the Essay, “What Is Self-Knowledge?”  

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Seen from Mars, it’s as if human beings as a whole don’t care if they themselves survive (or if other species are allowed to live).

Is this mass suicide?

An indifference to our own collective fate is spreading, even among people who are still devoted to their families. The indifference is justified as a form of realism. If we’re heading towards destruction then realism, they say, is accepting our fate (knowing all living things eventually die anyways).

Indifference to life and death itself is being conflated with realism.

And death as a natural completion of a life-cycle is being conflated with a premature murder/suicide of one another and millions of other species.

This isn’t a realistic or mature regard for life and death, but the very attitude of a person who has resigned themselves to giving up on a complete life and committing suicide before maturation. This “realism” is the suicidal impulse itself.

After all, what are the direct means by which we are prematurely killing ourselves? We’re denying the effects of climate change, indulging in fascism and allowing AI to gain total possession of our minds, and suck the marrow out of life itself, to name just three.

These are the self-destructive behaviors of an immature species, an adolescent species, who has set fire to the house, locked itself in its virtual room, and then climbed into bed to watch a movie with the dog. And when a brother bursts into the room, shouting “fire!”, the adolescent mocks him for his overzealous concern, saying, “calm down and be realistic: we’re all going to die eventually anyways.”

Denial, indulgence and apathy are the justifications for what’s happening, not the mature acceptance of life and death. There is a reason why we make a distinction between murder and natural causes.

I believe it is realistic to say that we are killing ourselves and murdering one another.

But it’s not realistic to accept this situation as inevitable.

Therefore, I’d like to suggest that it’s this lack of self-knowledge, this refusal to self-reflect, learn, change and die naturally to who we are, which is the problem. Suicide and murder are not the acceptance of death, but its denial. We would rather be consumed in a fire we started than give up the illusions of ourselves and allow who we thought we were to die naturally.

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The Two-Edged Sword of Thought and Action; On the Nature of Humor and Sorrow

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Recently, my wife and I drove past a house way out in the country, where 8 chickens were held in a cage that would be small for one. This was just after learning that the killings in Gaza were continuing under the radar; and Trump had just bombed another 20 fishermen for no reason. And Ms. Good had been murdered.

Our efforts to save the chickens became a surrogate attempt to put an end to all that pain and sorrow. In other words, it was futile. We could do nothing but contemplate a midnight raid, which would have caused the poor, ignorant woman in the shack to lose her mind. Because in some strange way she loved the chickens, or thought she did, and had raised them from eggs, she said. And there was nothing the sheriff or the animal welfare department could do under current laws; and we had no place to bring the chickens even if we stole them.

And after contemplating the possibility of losing my mind over an issue that was so small in comparison to what is happening in the broader world, I had to accept the pain. I had to admit that there is no possibility of separating the pain of life from the love of life. And that we live in a world that must always teeter between hell and heaven. And that we have to find a way to move through this border land without sinking into pits of despair or indulging in a transcendence too high for our tears to reach the earth.

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