I don’t know

Every day I am dumbstruck by how knowledgeable my fellow Aurovilians are. Take COVID. At a time when there is so much conflicting information available, and when even those who have worked for many years in the epidemiological field are still trying to figure out where it came from and what it means for the modern world, many Aurovilians can tell you the solution, or can direct you unerringly to a website or a statement of Mother or Sri Aurobindo, which makes sense of it all.

How on earth do they do it? 

Whatever the explanation, one would expect that with so many knowledgeable people around, Auroville would run like a well-oiled machine. But this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Why?

One possibility is that the knowledgeable ones disagree among themselves. And this could be because many of their beliefs and certainties reflect personal predispositions and biases rather than any objective ‘Truth”. 

As long as we are aware of this, we may be more open to other ways of seeing. However, this requires us to acknowledge the limitation of our own vision and beliefs. 

Ah, there’s the rub. For many people don’t like to stand up and admit they don’t know the answer. At a time when electorates around the world are voting for strong leaders because they seem so assured in their beliefs, admitting to not knowing looks like a weakness, a pitiful lack of moral and intellectual fibre. 

But is it? Perhaps, after all, there is some advantage to being an “I Don’t Know’. For as long as you know that you don’t know, a little bit of new and unexpected information may seep through the cracks and enlarge your understanding. 

In fact, in addition to our specialized working groups, perhaps we also need a “We Don’t Know” group. The WDK group would be made up of people aware of the complexity of many of the issues facing us today, and willing to rest not only in unknowing but also in mental silence – for as Mother pointed out, the mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above – until something more integral emerges than the facile, catch-all solutions we are often tempted to snatch at. 

As for the rest of us WDKs, we can be heartened by the fact that dear old Socrates, once described as wisest man in ancient Athens, was reported by Plato to have said, “I know that I know nothing”. Which, as a modern commentator explained, meant that Socrates believed the beginning of wisdom lay in knowing that you knew nothing; for much of what passed for knowledge among “wise” men was no more than their own unexamined assumptions.