Nothing.
A part from that guerrilla ethnography is focused on the one aspect that
former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forgot in his much discussed press statement about the known unknowns…
What he said during a press briefing on 12 February, 2002, was
There are known knowns: there are things we know that we know;
There are known unknowns, that is to say that there are things we now know that we don’t know;
But there are also unknown unknowns, there are things we do not know, we don’t know.
Now logically, when you have two components –“known” and “unknown”- there are going to be four and not only three combination possibilities. The one that Mr Rumsfeld is leaving out –probably wisely- on this occasion, is the unknown known.
However the unknown knowns of our societies are much more complex and intriguing than any known known, known unknown or unknown unknown the defense intelligence was ever able to map out.
The unknown known is essential to the functioning of our societies. They are the hidden treasures of our skillset and can either be congenital or acquired. Either way, they have been internalised to a such extent, that we don’t recognise them as an ability.
So, if they are unknown, how do we know?
Our unknown knowns are based on personal experiences and cultural value systems. The latter simply meaning the stories that are told in our communities about our communities. Whilst we live with those stories, individual experience is inevitably added, we take ownership over them and internalise them. This becomes the core of the unknown known.
From there, the unknown knowns spread into all aspects of life; on a societal level, it forms our moral sensitivity in the sense that we know what is right and wrong; on an economic level, it helps us to set priorities; socio-psychologically, it informs us of your role within a community.
More pragmatically, it is also the knowledge about how an island in the ocean kept self-sufficient with fresh water during WWII; its to know which plant grow better on which parts of the land; its why some people connect with some and not others; in short its an advanced sensibility for the cultural, economic and environmental facets of the community and how they interact and at best cross pollinate.
What Donald Rumsfeld didn’t call the unknown knowns back in 2002 is what we could categorise as the embedded knowledge of a community.
The embedded knowledge is luckily little use for military strategists, but it is present in every community. Its vital to any regeneration, development and vision building. It is this embedded knowledge of unknown knowns that guerrilla ethnography in its nature is designed to allure and ignite, share with the whole community and integrate with global expertise to co-vision the future of the all inhabitants.
Thanks for the share!
Nancy.R
I agree that the unknown known is often the most interesting portion – in fact if you ranked the four concepts it must be second only to the unknown unknown in volume.
It is tantalising to try and grasp, because we have a sense that it may be corralled into the known known. In a peculiar way, it is also more real than explicitly stated belief systems, which draw their power from, and focus on, the known known and the known/”known” unknown (science and religion both explore these facets, and both motivate people to tackle the unknown known!). Expressions like ‘sixth sense’, ‘gut instinct’, ‘deja vu’ etc are perhaps manifestations of this subconscious ‘knowing’ surfacing, a brief glimpse of the whale’s back before it curves back into the deep.
The greatest issue we face is that this sort of consciousness, like animals being able to instinctively migrate, evolved over millennia to equip us for human-scale and naturally-occurring situations and, as with migrating animals, even the portion of the skill that is passed down through actual experience (parent to offspring, or through social interaction) takes time to accrue.
The speed and scale of mankind-induced change is now so great (combined with the ever-greater illusion of ‘control’ and understanding) that trying to ‘extract’, codify or ‘course-correct’ that deeper knowing fast enough and convincingly enough to counter the ‘opposing forces’ (be they the collapse of stable social structures, economies or ecologies) makes the poster-boy challenge of climate change look like a walk in the park – however much (as you allude to in your earlier post) we may ‘want’ to operate at village scale.
None of that means that we shouldn’t attempt to tackle the issues, of course. But as you have so ably demonstrated by illustrating your extensive wardrobe, we are also as humans not equipped to hold these effectively abstract causes and effects in our minds long enough to act rationally, with restraint or – when called for – (and as Mr Rumsfeld’s colleagues might put it) ‘extreme prejudice’. We may want to operate at village scale, but we also want more clothes than we could ever need (for example).
The work of this group http://opensourceecology.org/ is significant I think – a sort of “Noah for the 21st century”.
The paradigm shift that we have been hoping for, talked of and needed since before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (published 50 years ago next year) is not materialising. As I often find myself quoting “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” (Upton Sinclair).
When you say that the ’embedded knowledge’ is of little use to military strategists, you’re not quite right – our collective reluctance, verging on inability, to recall, honour, explore, mine or leverage that vast human resource of the ‘unknown known’ is precisely what keeps the military-industrial complex in power. But let’s be honest – the chances of enough people being brave, willing and able enough to kick the habit of modern capitalism are very slim, and Rumsfeld & Co. know it.
Here’s one more sobering link to illustrate that last thought: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDaFwnOiKVE
I’m following the fortunes of Clear Village, and I noticed the walled garden project that features on Imogen Heap’s site – if you think you know any useful contacts to help this group http://soloco.co.uk/project-details/the-walled-garden-project.html do something similar, do pass them along.
Adrian
Thanks so much for sharing those insights, Adrian!
I have so many comments & questions, but most importantly:
How can we gather the ones who are brave/economically independent enough to think against the mainstream of salary dependencies (and all of the agenda that comes with that)?
How do we open up for and harness energy from the individuals who find themselves being sparetime-actionists?
Are the occupy movements a part of the new or the old system?
..and I see that I need to explain the transition visualisation project much more carefully and clearly. Its intended as a showcase and self experiment to investigate how design can enhance one’s identity rather than flatten it.
Will get back on that soon -as will I to your other comments!
thanks for share!
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