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Key points
- We need to challenge ourselves at the level of knowing about our knowing and our un-knowing.
- Our personal challenges and growth, not just the collective ones, require the same order.
- Explore the principles underneath your data, assumptions, and final positions.
When we forget all our learning, then we begin to know. —Henry David Thoreau
We cannot live on pretend foods like artificial whipped toppings. Fun to the taste, empty of nutrients. We all know this.
We cannot live on pretend thinking either, embellished and well-languaged thoughts, but empty and tired. We don’t know this nearly as much.
We are responsible for what we put into our bodies. We are responsible for what we put into our minds. How and where we put our attention is a moral action and set of decisions.
My question for all of us: How are we doing on how we feed our minds?
Yes, we are, most of us most of the time, beyond mental Cool Whip and pretend thinking. But these are important times for all of us on the planet with many deep and complex challenges. We need broader and deeper knowing and acting.
We can do better. We need to challenge ourselves at the level of knowing about our knowing and our un-knowing. This branch of philosophy that looks at how we know is called epistemology. This is what Donald Rumsfeld referred to, without the big word, when, in describing the invasion of Iraq 20-plus years ago—the “unknown unknowns” can mess up our plans for about anything, war included, more than the “known unknowns.”
We are “epistemologically impoverished” if we rely primarily on the thinking modes that got us here. This is why we put the equivalent of artificial whipped cream and Twinkies in our minds. Who thinks so? Many scientists, including Einstein, who was known for the pithy summation: to solve a problem we have to think at a higher level than at the level that created the problem. Another scientific mind that helps us on how and what we feed our minds, and subsequent poor decision-making, is the brain hemisphere genius Iain McGilchrist, who spent 20 years of his career, after Oxford, doing neuroimaging at John Hopkins.
McGilchrist’s latest book (a difficult read, but with much beauty and truth laced throughout, and the boldest book, with the biggest questions, I have ever read), like the one before it summarized in this well watched TED talk, wants to incorporate our left-hemisphere’s analytical prowess into more complete approaches. He painstakingly concludes in his works, and analytically points to this: that for our best thinking on the big questions confronting us—climate change, wealth disparity, crime and rehabilitation—the values and compassion and wisdom of the right hemisphere is the place to start. Then we bring in the analytical tools we are so fond of and good at.
But the order of the considerations and methods is important. Our personal challenges and growth, not just the collective ones, need the same order. First, we need attention that has an open receptivity to it, a deep curiosity of not knowing—like Thoreau mentions in the opening quote—and holding assumptions. This gets us out of our old assumptions. Then we can look at something with a freshness and a wider scope that combines the best of the old with the innovative possibilities of the new.
Where do we start?
The implications here are huge and lead us to consider: How do we upgrade our thinking modes? How does “starting with the right hemisphere” look? So, to begin, when you have a discussion or dialogue with others, think less about your expertise. Listen more. say less. Go to the principles underneath our data and assumptions and final positions on things. In the language of the Crucial Conversations world, we look for a shared pool of meaning with other thinkers on the topic, including the ones with whom we disagree.
Humility and dialogue, listening and receptivity. These are qualities of being, dispositions, that help us find and take deeper, wiser positions on all matters: from where to send our kids to school, to charging politicians with crimes, to protecting our environment.
A good dose of humility will help us too, to see things anew, broaden our thinking and get past our epistemological impoverishment. As the mystic Nicholas of Cusa said nearly 700 years ago in On Learned Ignorance—the deeper we know our unknowing, the nearer we are to the truth.
And stay away from too much whipped topping, ok? Put some on your pumpkin or apple crisp occasionally. A few times a year is plenty.
