unknown unknown well I'm not unknown
unknowns leap at you from places that
you wouldn't expect because otherwise
you would have plan for the damn thing
so there are the things that are always
like poking their beak up at you when
you least expect it they're just like
say serpents in the Garden of Eden that
might be one way of thinking about it
you can't keep the damn snakes out of
the garden and that's because you can't
make a bounded area and keep the
complexity out of it
the complexity always sneaks back in try
protecting your children from the
internet for example you can't make a
bounded circumstance and get rid of all
the complexity it always comes sneaking
back in so what would be an unknown
unknown this is a good one here you have
an intimate relationship you've had it
for 10 years you trust your partner so
what does that mean you know where you
are you know who you are and you have a
pretty good idea of where you're going
and then one day you'll find out that
your partner has been cheating on you
not with one person but with three
people and for the whole ten years well
hypothetically that comes as a shock
although you may have ignored many
informations that such might be the case
irrelevant
let's say it comes as a shock well what
happens to you while you don't know
where you are you don't know where
you've been that's interesting a because
you think you know where you've been
because you've already been there but
all of a sudden something can happen so
that you are so flipped over that you
don't even know where you were so that
means in some sense the past is
dependent on the present a very peculiar
thing you also have no idea where you're
going in terms of not knowing where you
are that's D say because you might think
well I you know I thought it was in a
marriage that turns out to be wrong I
thought I knew who my wife her husband
was that turns out to be wrong I
concluded on the basis that I knew my
wife that I knew something about women
that turned out to be wrong I thought I
was in a relationship with someone I
could trust that is wrong I don't know
enough about trust
I'm obviously too gullible and so what
that does is throw virtually everything
that ever had
to me in severe doubt right that's the
emergence of chaos and that this
sometimes you're going from point A to
point B and something you don't expect
manifests itself in the middle of your
plant but it's not such a catastrophe
because you can just work around it and
then sometimes something pops up and
like you just do not have a plan anymore
and so then you might ask yourself just
exactly where you are you when you don't
know where you are and I would say
that's a place and it's actually a place
that's well documented in classic
religious and mythological stories
that's chaos the Taoist for example they
believe that the world is made out of
chaos and order order that's where you
are with what you do get you what you
want chaos that's where you are when you
have no idea what's going on and you
might ask well is there a way that you
should act when you're in chaos and the
answer to that is there better be
because it's a place you're going to
visit several times during your life and
everyone visits that that's why it's an
archetypal story that's the descent to
the underground the underground is that
horrible place that lurks underneath all
of our presuppositions it's the frigid
lake underneath the thin ice that
everybody's skating on and it's
something that can manifest itself at
any moment that's partly why in the
taoist symbol the black paisley is chaos
by the way in the white paisley is
ordered in the order Paisley there's a
little black dog
well that's because order can turn into
chaos and does at any moment and the
reverse is also true
chaos center needs order at any moment
an insight will do that for you you know
alcoholics report that when they hit
bought it looks like there's a catalysis
and they look at the world in a
different way you know now they're a new
person they're back from the underground
they've risen from the dead so to speak
you know and it's partly because what
looks like your right hemisphere is
pretty good at inferring patterns in in
in novel and chaotic places it's trying
to keeping track of things that happen
to you that are anomalous and it makes
alternative maps of the world that are
for you to rely on at least to some
degree if that ever becomes necessary