The known superunknown
I know it's Donald Rumsfeld and yes, I would slap him if I ever met him…but he actually didn't do a bad job stating the epistemological truth, there. There are knowns; known unknowns; and importantly, unknown unknowns. Socrates (or his fans) would have said that the more you're aware of the probable existence of unknown unknowns, the more clearly you can edge the map - marking not just the islands you know you haven't been to, but also the places your map doesn't even attempt to cover - the wiser you are.
Mind you, I don't think Rummy had a fucking clue what he meant when he said that. I think serious pondering of that idea for about ten minutes has to result in an unwillingness to conduct a fucking war, for one thing. The sheer number of unknown unknowns involved, the unbelievable likelihood of screwing yourself in the long run, you'd think would paralyze any red-button-pusher with half a working synapse.
But I digress. Hell, I begin by digressing - is there some kind of extra credit for that?
It's Monday morning. This past weekend was full of ups and downs…I'll call it "brilliant" overall, with the caveat that brilliant things are blinding, can hurt, can make you walk into a wall when they shut off.
Sleep-wise, I slept 8 hours Thanksgiving night, after getting no naps that day. Woke up feeling sore and sluggish; ew. After that, I managed to get two naps on Friday and Sunday, and sleep 4.5 hours at night - going to bed at 11:30, and waking up at 4am feeling fine. On Saturday I only got one nap, and I tried to sleep 4.5 hours but slept six instead (my body was Not Playing Games about getting the rest it needed, in the face of all the running around and emotional upheaval).
Still, it wasn't anywhere near the failure I had feared…my schedule survived, and I have every reason to expect that I can pick this week up like nothin', get right back to it. Woot.
I did get way too much food and not enough exercise, but such are holidays I suppose…it occurs to me that humanity has been doing the feasting-in-the-winter thing for hundreds upon hundreds of generations by now, and it's entirely likely that it's just not that bad for us anymore. ;)
This morning, I decided to pursue a little education with my three pre-work hours…I watched "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train", a documentary of Howard Zinn - which I really enjoyed; I've read some of Zinn's work but after learning more about him, I'll totally read more: awesome guy! Then I followed it up with "Capitalism: A Love Story" - I know that Moore's movies express a biased point of view, but I also know that it's the opposite bias of the one I hear 90% of the time in other media (taking this opportunity to metaphorically slap anyone who claims that mainstream media equals a lack of bias) - which I'm not sure I'll be able to watch all of, but it's definitely food for thought. I do think it's funny that Moore is seen as so slaveringly radical, when everything I've ever seen of his is a pretty basic rallying cry for more democracy. It's not PhD-level, but then again neither is anything I've seen from the opposing view. And it's not radical…radical is saying, in all seriousness, that it might be completely fair to get some fucking guns and tell the banks that if they want these houses, they can come take them the old fashioned way.
I still have nightmares about foreclosures in Michigan.
And I think I have actual Survivor's Guilt; I can't look that way without shuddering, without the organic food going sawdust in my mouth. I feel like I left my family in a war-zone, even if I left to get help. It's slowly occurring to me that it's not an accident that I stopped listening to NPR, have been avoiding news almost completely, and avert my eyes from for-sale signs as if they burn. It's stupid on a level, but on another level, it ought to say something that this economic climate is actually bad enough to cause PTSD.
…
And this is why documentaries before 7am are not always a good idea. ;)
Originally published at *Transcendental *Logic. You can comment here or there.