I Don’t Know
This occurred to me today – during the Renaissance it became clear the Bible did not have all the facts, and truth could not be found in other books at the time. To know, you would just have to look for yourself. A novel idea. Some looked directly at nature for the first time, and it was not what they expected, many great discoveries were made.
Today, I don’t seem to live in the natural world. I live in a world of concepts of corporations, governments, markets, and currencies. All very abstract, mind stuff, but with real consequences. Can I retire, or will I be a Wall-Mart greeter when I’m 75?
With the stock market gyrations lately, I thought – I want to understand what it going on. So where do I look? There is no nature to look at, nothing independently physical. All I can see are people on TV, in magazines, on the internet or in person. All I ever get is other people’s thoughts about what is going on. How the hell would they know? Their only source is other people’s thoughts too. There doesn’t seem to be an original source.
Oh, there are facts. The Fed cut rates by half a percent. IBM opened at 111.87, today is Friday and the temperature will be 107. But what the hell does that really mean? I don’t know.
With programming, if I don’t know, I can look it up, I can figure it out. With life, I’m beginning to see that, not only, don’t I know anything – I can’t think of anyplace I can go to get the answers.
It seems I am going to have to get comfortable with not knowing.
