Hezo Kittie

I Don't Know

More references to these damn pesky eternal truths.

"I was going to write this piece about what I've learned in the past year, but that is a book not a blog post. I doubt I could even fit what I've learned in the past month into 10,000 words. It's crazy how much you can learn when you stop thinking you know everything, when you finally abandon whatever pre-conceived notions you have about how the world works, and instead of fitting facts into theories, you start to form theories around facts, constantly challenge them with new facts, and change them as facts change. When you recognize that what you don't know is vastly greater than what you do. When you realize you don't know anything.

I read The Apology my freshman year of college, and I thought I understood it. I thought I got Socrates' point that only by admitting fallibility and lack of knowledge can you really understand anything. And of course I read Nassim Taleb's books, Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan, and I thought I got his points about uncertainty and risk governing our lives.

Well, maybe I got it in an intellectual sense, but definitely NOT in a real, visceral sense. I mean come on--no one on earth was more arrogant than me in my twenties. I thought I had learned that lesson by the time I published my book, but I don't think I really learned the humility that comes with understanding your place in the universe in any true way until this past year. The events of this past year (making a movie, falling in love, starting counseling, etc, etc) burned a lesson into me I will always hold in the front of my mind:

No matter how smart or right you think you are, never forget: What you don't know is infinitely greater than what you do.

And that IS one to grow on, motherfucker." - Tucker Max, May 26th, 2009