How do you know what you know?

One of the most important questions we can ever ask ourselves is, “How do I know what I know?”

We cycle through a lot of truisms throughout any given day, whether we are trying to guide our children, navigating work relationships, or passively absorbing social media.

Murder is bad.

Your feelings are valid.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Vaccines save lives/cause autism.

But why do we receive these things as true? How do we know they are true?

A Brief History of Knowledge

As we look back on the old days, our knowledge largely came to us as follows:

• Instinct 🥩 

• Magic ✨ 

• Authority 👑 

• Reason 🔭 

We discovered fire and hunting from our drive to survive.

As time flew by and languages grew, we developed stories to explain the unexplainable, until gods and spirits, demons and devils were behind everything. Eventually, we learned the magic spells to appease them.

The Middle Ages gave us authorities who told us what to believe—kings, caliphs, and codified scriptures. We knew the world around us because it had been revealed to God’s messengers. God said it, and that settled it.

But then Copernicus said the earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and all hell broke loose. Authority had been punctured and the Age of Reason emerged, with its emphasis on hypothesis, facts, and progress.

The point is, how we “know” what we know changes.

So where are we today?

It’s easy to think that we’ve gone through all the modes of knowing that we will ever go through. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Today, we are in the middle of a new unknowing.

The grand narratives that were put forward by both Authority and Reason are largely up for grabs.

Huges swaths of society have renegotiated their relationship with the codified scriptures of both Religion and Science (not to mention the State).

Unknowing what we were once taught as objective truth and reknowing it through the lens of the individual’s subjective experience—or a plurality of experiences—is at the heart of so many of our differences today: those who seek to conserve the past ways of knowing, and those who seek progress beyond the same.

But the proliferation of data—with any individual now able to serve as an authority or create a rationale unto themselves—has cut into our shared knowledge. And the trade-off may be reaching its breaking point.

How can different communities of knowing live in peace?

When I’m operating at my best, I tend to view many of the conflicts that divide us today as epistemic—a difference in how we “know” things.

At my best, I ask why someone believes what they believe. And I ask why I believe what I believe. And then I look for common ground that could lead to further agreement.

But when I’m at my worst, I go straight to judgment.

Those people are idiots.

Clueless.

Out of touch.

Without a common Authority, our competing claims must now be shouted louder and louder. And so we do.

But just as the Age of Authority overreached and the Age of Reason was captured by corporate interests, the post-modern assault on grand narratives through the issuing of new grand narratives has, in my estimation, reached diminishing returns.

We will not be able to further deconstruct our way out of the conflicts we are experiencing.

Bring me a higher love

Instead, a higher synthesis must emerge. Some of those who know the world through Authority will continue on their path, unchanged. As will a portion of those who claim to know through Subjectivity. But a path to a higher way is appearing for those who will take it.

You still think your Scripture has authority?

Bring it with you.

You still think the Scientific Method matters?

Let’s go.

And feelings, too?

You believe in hierarchy? And empathy?

Power? And personal responsibility?

Let’s figure it out together!

A new way of knowing—and therefore living—is trying to emerge.

The Black & White is over. It’s never coming back. But Endless Shades of Gray is not a solution; it’s only a trade-off, creating confusion and an inability to organize around anything “universal”.

We need a synthesis. It’s time to rise to a new level altogether and find a way to integrate these different ways of knowing from a higher place.

I know such optimism will not seem like progress to many, while there are still power structures to destroy and narratives to upend.

But deconstruction cannot bring joy, only relief.

For joy, we must be bold enough to believe, to unite, and to build our ideals.

Jeremy Courtney
Cofounder
HUMANITE

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