Think of something that you really know about; perhaps baseball, or cooking or electricity. Now think of something that you don’t really know about; again, possibly baseball, cooking or electricity.
Now imagine that there are things that you don’t know about, but that are so remote that you don’t even know that you don’t know about them. Like electricity five-thousand years ago.
People then didn’t know about electricity, but they couldn’t even wonder about it because they didn’t even know it existed. Electricity was in humanity’s “unknown unknown.”
Yet somehow electricity was “illuminated.” Somehow it was brought from humanity’s unknown unknown to where people at least knew they didn’t know about it. And once it was in our “known unknown” we could consider and explore it, and eventually harness it to our own ends.
It’s obvious given the condition of the world that how to make safe, efficient, powerful change has been in humanity’s unknown unknown. But the NCI includes a set of tools for illuminating.
We’ve used these tools to create a new method of conceiving strategies for change that we call “reinventing culture.” After commenting here, please read Reinventing Culture. At some point you’ll be empowered by reading and commenting on More About Illuminating.
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Please comment. Share your opinions! If you’re having a hard time thinking of something to say, try answering one of these questions:
- How do you think the process of illuminating works?
- What role do you think illuminating plays in creating new knowledge?
- What importance do you think illuminating plays in our personal lives?
- Tell of an experience of something being illuminated for you personally.
If you comment, someone will respond.
Interesting. There’s a distinction or maybe even another category that could be made here, and maybe it will be referred to later: individual vs. collective. A duck-billed platypus would have been in my unknown unknowns at age 4, and even now is in my known unknowns. But the latter category, plus the known known, are much more likely if the platypus is already in the collective known-known. Or even in another individual k-k.
And nowadays, the individual has access to such vast stores of yet to be discovered known-knowns, the “illuminating” process you refer to seems just a google search away. So what’s the prob?
I think what you’re saying in your first paragraph, Phil, is that if something is in your community’s or another proximate person’s known known, that it’s much more likely to come into at least your known unknown. Right?
Then I think you’re saying that there’s so much in the world’s known known–as available on the internet–that everything you could want to know is already available. Right again?
Assuming I understand your first paragraph, I agree completely. The converse is true too. If your community and proximate people have little knowledge about say relationships, there won’t seem to be much to learn about them, and your performance will reflect your lack of knowledge.
On your second point, first, let me say there is no problem. I’m merely pointing out something that always has been and always will be part of the human condition. And I’m explaining in advance why–when you see how simple it is–we’ve never used reinventing culture. Reinventing culture has been in our collective unknown unknown.
I also need to point out that you can’t–by definition–know the google search term for something that’s in your unknown unknown. If you live in a community that possesses little knowledge about relationships, interpersonal friction will seem normal, and you won’t even think to google “relationships.”
Al, I agree with you. We can’t know what we don’t know. Let’s restrict this to the ordinary American. If our public school education didn’t teach us how to know that we can’t possibly know everything by ourselves and that there is far more out there than any one of us can know, then, the logical conclusion is that the only way we can get to know what we don’t know is through open-minded discussion, especially with folks who know what we don’t know. I think this is what you are saying. In most cases folks argue and even fight with folks who know things they don’t know and, thus, it’s uncomfortable for them to talk with these folks.
As a public and also private school English Teacher, it’s come to me that the most exciting discussions are those among folks who don’t know what the other folks know, so there can be growth though discussion.
I guess it’s this awareness that has caused me to found the USC IGM Art Gallery so we can have art-framed forums that bring together public, private, nonprofit/failth-based, academic and media leaders to share and leverage existing resources with the goal of informing, engaging, and empowering their constituents to grow personally and professional through substantive civic engagement.
This, of course, based on the knowledge that the young are our future and thus we must place children, youth, their families, health and culture in the forefront of all decision making, if we truly believe in a govt. of, by and for the people.
Thanks for your comment, Lynn. Where I’m going is a little different though.
I’m trying to point to humanity’s unknown unknown. What do we do about that? One of the problems is that knowledge has to be at least in our known unknown to assess its value. Without a structured method for illuminating we may leave ourselves blind to knowledge critical to our survival.
Admittedly, this post is a little thin, and I can appreciate that it would be hard to see many implications from it. If you check the site map you’ll see there are several articles adding details. “A Lexicon for Illuminating” pretty much spells out the whole story.
Thanks for commenting! Please continue.