Brent Kearney

In his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb defines an epistemocrat as “someone of epistemic humility, who holds his own knowledge in greatest suspicion.” For Jerome Groopman, this person continues to search for answers by asking, “What else could it be?” Richard Feynman recommends to “keep the door to the unknown ajar.” From Chester Newland’s perspective, an epistemocrat never stops “searching for human dignity.” Like Socrates said, “Wisdom is knowing how little we know.”

I love this! I found it on Keith Norris’s blog, Theory to Practice. He in turn, stole it from healthcare epistemocrat.

When CrossFit is no longer challenging, consider SEALFIT “@lisatwight: Army Times http://t.co/Ecj8iXSV” http://t.co/wPEnpXMm #madness

Great video by @JesseBrown, featuring @dweinberger, on #WikiLeaks and the fight against the Open Internet http://t.co/f3u2kQCu #democracy

Some interesting ideas in “What the IT department will look like in 2015″ @ http://t.co/3jg4bQNq #IT

Great job! “@deniseminger: My critique of the vegan documentary “Forks Over Knives” http://t.co/qdwyYqKD” #nutrition

The Neuroscience of Beauty: How does the brain appreciate art? | @SciAm http://t.co/YUKOOu2V

But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.

That excerpt is from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Here, the character Ahab expresses his unstoppable drive to know the nature of the world – is there some deeper meaning behind what we see, or is what we see on the surface all that we get? He hates not knowing, and it drives him to hunt the whale.

I found this in All Things Shining, chapter 6. Kelly & Dreyfus offer insightful analysis of the story, the time it was told, and the hint we can take from it, towards alleviating the nihilism of modernity.

[T]here is no hope that it is more than this, no longing for some further, final, ultimate truth; and there is no despair, either, at the thought that such deep and final truth might not be found. The medieval picture of a secure and final and certain foundation—of God as the deep and final source of all that is—has been left behind. As Ishmael says, “I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity.”

Ahab would never be satisfied until he attained the truth behind the mysterious white whale; he would never be happy until the mystery was uncovered, his mission completed. Ishmael, however, argues that true happiness is found in “the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country.”

This kind of Christian joy, however, is hidden from us because we’re trying to look past it, to find something deeper. We have joy—real joy of the sort promised by Christianity, in Ishmael’s view—all around us; we just need to be attentive. That is ultimately why we must lower, or at least shift, our conceit of attainable felicity. For Ahab’s determined monotheism covers up the very real and polytheistic joys that are already around you, at least some of the time, then you will see that this is a mood that you have in the here and now. Not forever, and not always. But you can appreciate it when the opportunity presents itself.

So stop and smell the flowers! Be mindful of the joys in life, and have gratitude for them when they happen.