The Fourth Quadrant- The Unknown Known

There are known knowns — there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns — that is to say, there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know

Donald Rumsfeld 

I turned 38 today and of all the quotes I could pick to give narrative force to this occasion, why am I going with Donald Rumsfield talking about the catastrophe that was the Iraq invasion? 

It's because while he stumbled upon a tremendous epistemological truth, Donald was one configuration shy of making a whole quadrant of knowledge

Everyone is fairly familiar with the things that they know- for instance that they're alive, that they need to stop drinking so much at parties etc. They also know the things that are unknown-but this knowledge is twofold. they know that they could know but currently don't know -something like how many cars are brought into the country every day, or how the universe came to be they know that they lack this knowledge. 

Stretch it further and you have the preserve of the researcher, the explorer, the adventurer, and the artist- going into the unknown unknowns..Understanding that the horizon of our knowledge can be extended. That we don't know until we look at what we will find therefore we ought to look. 

But what about the fourth quadrant? How can there be Unknown knowns- it seems paradoxical. How can you know something but at the same time be unaware that you have this information? This makes sense in two ways- tacit embodied knowledge and ideology. 

The Embodied

Tacit knowledge is the wisdom of the body- the ability to maneuver the world, to know how to ride a bicycle but not know exactly how you know this, to know when you are being stared at without having to receive a clear signal in your senses.

As a lover of philosophy, I often get lost in the abstract in the world of abstractions, of logic and appearance-and forget the tangible, the concrete(Forgive me Hegelians, I'm using the regular understanding of concrete). ..As Nietzsche says - 

"I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgeable would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.”

As I get older, the things I take for granted increase. And the fight against the ravages of entropy only gets tougher as my body takes a little longer to get up a flight of stairs, carries the evidence of all those cheat meals a little more, and needs way more rest and recovery time after a night out- I find that it's easy to treat it as a vehicle. As a mere shell that houses my soul..the real me. But no, the body is me. And there's a need to respect it...Respect its immediate intuitions, its emotional signals, its needs for good food, sun, exercise, wholesome touch, and the love of its conscious ego driver. 

2 steps away from the fourth floor and I am only now fully appreciating that this is the only body I'll ever have... I might as well love and treat it right and that involves listening to the things it..namely, I know. 

Takes twice as much effort to get half the results now 😩

Ideology

A story is told of the physicist Niels Bohr. He was said to have a horseshoe hung outside his home-a tradition in parts of Europe meant to ward off evil spirits and keep the home safe. When visited by a fellow scientist, he was asked what he was doing having that up. 

Are you superstitious ous now, Niel? 

Niel: No of course not. I'm a man of science. I keep it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it!!

This is ideology. 

It is the implicit logic, the quiet assumptions that ground the actions we take and that we only confront occasionally. We think of the ideological as the politically active, the ones that can point to a specific ideological cannon and their adherence to it. 

Take money for instance-ask anybody around and they'll tell you money isn't everything. That there are things more important than that-but then watching how we treat money-the things we would do, the precious moments with our loved ones we would sacrifice , the morals we would lay aside to secure it. We can explicitly say and even believe that we are not slaves to money, but our actions show the unknown known. 

But the truth of ideology is the one who believes themselves to be free, rational, and without an ideological lens may in fact be the most ideological of all. Rather than make the world clear, ideology filters your experience of the world to make it coherent and most of us never question the filters. We don't really see what we are doing without an ideological answer. 

The temptation to be free of it, to take the red pill and leave the matrix is a fantasy born of those that seek to be their own masters-that there is a "they" out there that they can fight against and thus have their identity crafted in opposition to the evil forces of the world. And when you encounter others with this mindset, you are justified. 

Long story short, I am focused not so much on my explicitly stated beliefs but rather on the logical system that I am enacting in my everyday life. The meaning that I believe drives all existence and provide context to the choices I believe are available to me, the way I judge my life as successful or a failure, how I think of love and meaning and truth not in beautiful words but in the ways I show up for people, the things I prioritize, the work of my hands and the things I am willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of happiness.

Sunglasses at night. I thought U was the ish 😅

Speaking of happiness, 8 years ago...I turned 30..Dreadlocks and all I was ready for was an epic night out with my friends, a weekend with my girl, and a flood of birthday wishes because January babies don't get shit. But a friend asked me what I wanted to make me happy...And I made a list. 

It had things like driving a nice car, having a great house, a well-paying job with a big company, etc. All these things were in the future; conditions for me to be happy. As I sit here today, I achieved most of those things in a shorter time than I thought I would but I don't think I am any happier than I was back in 2015. 

I'm proud of myself for going for them, and grateful for them really these are comforts, they are accolades. Ways to make my life attractive-ways in which I can be more desirable to others and perhaps through that, find myself to be more desirable.

But desire is a lack-shaped hole in all of us. We are open subjects, that need things and people outside ourselves to feel complete-a completeness which is an illusion that nonetheless, we seek. Happiness and fulfillment always seem on the horizon, in the next purchase, in the next holiday, in the next conquest. Desire shifts from object to object and we keep on chasing. 

Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself

Salvoj Zizek

So if anything, this unknown known -the fact that desire is always moving, is a daily reminder to me not to terrorize myself with the need to feel happy all the time Happiness is not the goal, but a happy byproduct of a life full of myriad experiences, of crafting who you are through what you do. It seems important, but the unknown known is we do not really know what will secure it... the point of life is to keep trying though, and understand that the climb is better than the destination. That the view of the mountain from below is just as beautiful as the one from above, after all, once you get up there, the next thing will be coming down. 

The temptation we face is to think all things are working together for our good...to contextualize meaning from above rather than understanding that meaning-making is a human activity. The transcendent has been sublimated into the material ..into our hands. As the Christian might say, rather than look up to the skies, look within and around, for wherever two or more are gathered in love, that is where God is. Within, not without. 

You give meaning to your life, whether inherited from others or authored in the moments of contemplation that lead you to these questions. Perhaps this is my ideology. To continually examine my assumptions. These unknown knowns 

Cheers