not knowing

"Knowing is shallow, not knowing is profound". This paradoxical line from Zhuangzi caught my attention and I have been puzzled by it ever since.

Here is how I currently read it: symbolic representations replace direct contact with reality.

Let's take a tree for example. You can say: there is a tree growing outside of my house. Or you can go and experience the tree. Trees are so weird if you really think about it, the only reason we are not struck in awe by them is how abundant they are in the world. They are these weird spirits that literally build themselves out of thin air, they bring minerals and water to impossible heights, they operate cohesively as a single organism without a brain or nervous system, and they live on a vastly different timeline than us. This is so alien!

Explicit language-centric knowledge tends to replace the experience itself. You are now articulating virtue, instead of living virtuously. You are preaching the benefits of solitude, instead of going away into solitude. And the mind plays this trick where it feels like you now understand it, you say it, hence it's real. But it's not. Language creates an illusion of possession.

Social intelligence is usually implicit. If you read the room, if models of your relationships are predictive and you act on them, there is no reason why they should exist as an articulated knowledge. But let's take an example of an autistic person who is born with bad priors and cannot discover solutions to the social problems naturally. The articulated knowledge is a useful stage for them where they can reverse engineer people's behavior and painstakingly make models of others' psychology as well as their own psychology. The true mastery in this case will come only after this knowledge is practiced and ultimately forgotten.

Knowing is shallow, not knowing is profound.