The Wisdom of Humanity
At a time when we are relying more on knowledge than at any period in human history, We Don’t Know! makes the case for re-directing thought and attention towards not-knowing, revealing that it is through acknowledging our being (rather than just our knowledge) that we can learn how to live with humanity, and so truly address the world’s many crises of inhumanity.
Humankind’s reliance on knowledge is at an all-time high. Yet despite the AI-fuelled ‘culture of knowledge’ that increasingly dominates our lives, multiple crises continue to threaten our very existence. We behave as if the more we know the more control we’ll have, and the better things will be. At the same time, personal experience, art, religion and nature constantly remind us that when it comes to what truly matters, knowledge is never enough. This is the backdrop to We Don’t Know! an exploration of our relationship with not-knowing.
Set over a fortnight during a cold and wintery November in a remote coastal cottage, We Don’t Know! comprises a series of daily meditations on not-knowing and exercises in being that ask probing questions including – How do we bring that which is beyond knowledge into our daily lives? How might we learn to allow and accept the otherness of each other’s being, thereby reducing human suffering? And how do we move past our fear of the unknown, opening to the full promise of humanity and coming to know what it’s like to be?
In the face of multiple crises of inhumanity, from climate change, wars, violence, an epidemic of mental illness, to perceived threats and dangers from Artificial Intelligence (AI), we urgently need to re-discover our sense of the human. We Don’t Know! provides clues for doing this, advancing an unlikely form of activism founded on the grace of acknowledging the unknowable. This is the wisdom of humanity.