graeber can’t know law
one of the most important things all humans really do have in common: the fact that we all have to come to grips, to one degree or another, with what we cannot know
from david graeber‘s radical alterity
20
What if the world did exist but we just couldn’t prove it?
If the greatest strength of OT is its willingness to embrace the limits of human knowledge (that is, as a form of Epistemology1); its greatest flaw, to my mind at least, is that it doesn’t take this principle nearly far enough. Radical alterity applies only to relations between cultural worlds. There is never any sense that people existing inside other Ontologies2 have any trouble understanding each other, let alone the world around them; rather, out of respect for their otherness, we are obliged to act as if their command of their environment were so absolute that there were no difference whatever between their ideas about, say, trees, and trees themselves.
It strikes me that by doing so, and especially, by framing this attitude as an ethical imperative, OT makes it effectively impossible for us to recognize one of the most important things all humans really do have in common: the fact that we all have to come to grips, to one degree or another, with what we cannot know.. t
usefully ignorant.. not yet scrambled by intellect ness et al
huge huge huge
that’s why.. no prep.. no train.. et al.. so important.. graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al
that’s why.. our days would be best spent on ie: imagine if we just focused on listening to the itch-in-8b-souls.. first thing.. everyday.. and used that data to augment our interconnectedness..
a nother way for all of us to live.. aka: org’d around legit needs
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know\ledge ness.. intellect ness ness.. usefully ignorant ness.. et al
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be you. 