Reconciliation Of You.

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts -- Charles Peirce

I often ask perilous questions, in regard to myself or other people or society as a whole. The most perilous question one can ask, is to question the question. To search for the true motive behind a question or act. Distraction and different biases makes good and crystal clear thinking often very cumbersome. I believe that there are two different ways of expressing yourself, or better: two different ways of going about it. The first way of dealing with things is the false impression of yourself or the mask, and the other is the real true expression of yourself, or the true meaning and reason behind things. Which means that the true meaning behind things can work and operate through methods that are not sincere in order to obtain them. It is false, and it is not the real you. It is self-trickery.

My first hands-on experience was when I started to design for the Internet. Like most designers, we think that what we make, makes sense to everyone. And that design is the pinnacle of aesthetics. What designers often forget, is that enjoying design means learning enjoying design. To obtain designer skills, you must learn what is slick and what is not. The golden mean, proportion and color use. But there is a problem with that. When we are in the act of learning it, we actually lose track of it. It is numbing us, the more you focus on a particular object the more you'll lose it's shape and function. Designers can get a hang-up on a pixel that is out of place, while the average surfer doesn't even see nor care about it. He isn't trained to see it, and thus cannot appreciate what the designer intended to present to the surfer. Most surfers come on the Internet for information, not for your design. And thus, the objective gets in his own way.

Designers then learn the laws of simplicity, leaving stuff out instead of putting stuff in, because that looks somehow better. And in the end they are no longer designers, because they don't longer de-sign it, but rearrange what pleases the eye. They learn to lose their skills and are going back where they actually started. Most painters you know about had the same reverse curve in their life. Many started out with detailed pictures, and when they gain mastery they are painting with 2 inch thick brushes, squashing paint and use abstract techniques to capture their thoughts and ideas. They un-learned it, but they needed that long hard road to get to the ultimate sophistication which everyone already possesses. Which actually sounds a bit awkward. But what they are doing is mirroring what they already are, instead on improving on it. They mirroring their true self into it, because that cannot be improved upon in a strict sense.

I think many things in life work this way. Whether you talk about learning to play an instrument or trying to be a hacker. Sure enough, one needs the necessary evil which is called learning. But is that true? and why is that true. Isn't this also taught that it has to be like this? Why can't knowledge stem from yourself? Learning is knowing what someone else already found out. So, basically someone knew nothing first, and obtained it from within, because it has to start somewhere. Actually, learning is nothing more than a translation into symbols you already understand natively. There isn't really any new information that you didn't already knew about. Learning C or Java is only a matter of understanding it's syntax. It isn't new information, only it's representation differs.

So I think that learning or gaining knowledge is only reconciliation. It is knowing yourself, understanding yourself. To grasp yourself by going through all the curves and turning back where you started. When people get lost or got a hang-up on something, it is when they separate the knowledge from them self. Knowledge becomes alien, this world becomes alien and hostile. The universe must be controlled. It is out-of-control, and something that must be rigorously beaten into submission to gain control of it. But what we try to obtain is self-control through it. I always think that control is recursive, it leads to alienation, misery and frustration. When we are trying to understand something we usually don't look in the obvious place to start looking. We start to look outside ourselves, instead of looking inwards. I think that is the ultimate philosophy and answer there is, because there is nothing besides what you already are. There is nothing you cannot accomplish what you already are. Knowing yourself takes courage but it leads to wisdom, and wisdom shatters all false reasons and reconciles you with knowledge, which is you, you who doesn't have to prove it's you anymore.