Rx For Well-Being
71
Not-knowing
is true knowledge.
Presuming to know
is a disease.
First realize that you are sick;
then you can move toward health.
The Master is her own physician.
She has healed herself of all knowing.
Thus she is truly whole.
Tao Te Ching by Lao-tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell
How much is taking place around each of us? So much, enough to make your head spin. Everyone wants to know. As it stands an iphone screen is conduit for a curated serving of “news.” The grand illusion, that being “in the know,” is simple matter of scroll and click!
Should we, you and I consent to be fooled over and over? How about you?
What I learned from this morning’s New York Times headlines:
1. Overnight the Federal government shut down.
2. At an unprecedented meeting of top military brass, Generals and Admirals were informed by Secretary-of-War Hegseth, (a former Fox News entertainer) the new professional expectation is distinctly reminiscent of the German SS of 1933. “Enemies” to be given no quarter in America’s cities.
3. Chunk is the winner of 2025 Alaska Fat Bear Week.
As a good friend of mine keeps saying, “mindfulness” is an act of pausing, to understand that none of this takes precedence over three or four items on my “to-do” list for this Wednesday. Nor ought I to allow awareness of these matters to distract me from any of the people I am certain to encounter today.
Music knits humankind into a single tribe. This one, S.O.B. by Nathanial Rateliff & The Nightsweats works!
2 thoughts on “Rx For Well-Being”
“Not-knowing
is true knowledge.
Presuming to know
is a disease.”
Is this not the underpinning of Socratic thought?
I am also reminded of the Dunning-Krueger Effect where people who think they know more than they do tend to pontificate about subjects where they are sorely lacking any knowledge. Hegseth and the master ubermensch are both prime examples.
You are correct. Socrates was dangerous to the status quo of Athenian society. He admitted to being one of the few who “didn’t know.” “I know that I know nothing” Plato wrote of Socrates in The Apology.