2003-05-25 1:57 pm

The Swamp

There are lots of different types of knowledge.

Two types that it's important to distinguish between are scientific knowledge, or knowledge of a given subject, and knowledge of oneself and one's position in the world.

Knowledge of a given subject will earn you a decent living, a house, and other satisfying and necessary things. Most importantly, it will also provide you with a source of activity.

Knowledge of oneself will not provide you with any of these things. What is more, it is impossible to attain it to the degree of certainty that is possible with, say, car mechanics. Because of this lack of certainty, it is difficult to put the little you do know into practice, and the mistakes that you inevitably make - caused by the millions of invisible circumstances that life involves - you immediately attribute to your own lack of self-knowledge, rather than the impossibility of acting without any interference from those millions of invisible circumstances, which are beyond your control. It is like trying to plan a battle without knowing the position, strength or movements of the enemy, without knowing the lie of the land, or without even knowing fully the powers of one's own forces. When it comes to self-knowledge, and guiding oneself through the world, it is a matter of instinct, and those that succeed are those that act on the spur of the moment, or act without thinking. They are attuned to some invisible scent that will guide them along the correct path.

People who strive for self-knowledge, like me, are ditherers and wanderers. They realise nothing, they know nothing, and the less they know the more convinced they become that there is something out there to be found, some all encompassing fact or truth, a patch of dry land in the swamp in which they find themselves sinking. The more they struggle, the deeper they sink, and they only realise when it is too late that the idea of the dry land is the swamp, that there is no dry land, that there is no truth.

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