"The only thing I know is that I know nothing." — Socrates (attributed, via Plato)
I keep trying to figure out where to start. That's the thing about interconnected ideas—there's no natural beginning. Every entry point assumes something else. It is just time to dive in.
The only certainty is uncertainty after all.
"The search for certainty led philosophers to accept pseudo-solutions rather than sit with the discomfort of not knowing." — Hans Reichenbach
There is a moment in every intellectual exchange when discomfort arrives. A question lands that doesn't fit. A challenge emerges that threatens the architecture we've built. In that moment, we face a choice—perhaps the most important choice any thinker can make.
We can engage. Or we can retreat.
"Beneath the surface of the protective parts of trauma survivors there exists an undamaged essence." — Bessel van der Kolk
I have been living outside of the human system for some time now. It wasn't entirely by choice. For years now I have been living with CPTSD. It is insidious- one of the most difficult things, if not the most difficult thing, I have survived. It has come with great costs though, one of which has been isolation from most human systems and contact.
"A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it." — Chinese Proverb
I've been circling something. You've probably noticed if you've been reading along—the same shape keeps showing up in different clothes. Uncertainty. Indeterminacy. Constraints that somehow create rather than limit. Systems that are complete yet produce something new. I keep coming back to it, poking, prodding, and sometimes jiggling it from different angles, not quite naming it.