You are a fool
Join the club ;)
Hey there. So, I’m guessing my insult-a-stranger-on-the-internet clickbait tactic has angered or (hopefully) intrigued you?
Anyway, how do I know that you’re a fool, without knowing you?
I know you’re a fool because every human in existence is a fool - myself included. And, this isn’t some pessimistic humanity-hating cynic’s rant about how all people are stupid and awful and humanity is a disease. Even if this were objectively true, believing it would be unhelpful and destructive for our ability to decrease how stupid and awful and disease-like we may be.
The constructive perspective on the foolishness of humanity is this: we’re all fools, because we all have partial and incomplete knowledge of reality, and any knowledge we do have is mediated through the subjectivity of our mental landscape, which is only as vast as our life experience. And a person’s life experience is necessarily a subset of everything that could be experienced, because what exists to be discovered is infinite*, and humans are finite creatures. Therefore, since we are all dependent on our mind’s accumulations to intellectually make sense of things, and since these accumulations can never be completely representative of reality, we can never know things as they are.
*If you’re not convinced about this, consider time. If the universe does not have an ‘expiry date’, time would progress infinitely: there would be an infinite string of things to discover. If the universe does have some kind of expiry date, why? And if we managed to answer that, why is that the answer? And so on…
In fact, we could infinitely ask, ‘why?’ for anything in existence. Therefore, the discoverable is infinite - although, our ability to discover may not be…
Any assertions that we make about some aspect of existence that is more specific than the ultimate assertion that ‘everything exists’ must be inaccurate to some degree, because they won’t encompass everything in existence. However, we can arrive at assertions that are almost entirely accurate.
We can always improve the accuracy of our approximations of reality (i.e., our beliefs and ideas about things), but improvements are only possible when we accept that they are. Often, we succumb to the illusion that our approximations are exact, so we stop trying to refine them; our ideas about the world ossify into beliefs that we clutch as though they’re a part of us.
A belief might seem to hit the mark - it might appear to offer a reasonable explanation for something. But as soon as we believe, this is it - this is the way it is, our ideas cannot be refined - they will only solidify and stagnate, and our minds will become rigid and inflexible, unable to integrate new insights and information.
This isn’t about rejecting all claims about reality, like some subjectivist is-reality-even-real philosophication. We could still adopt a set of beliefs, but just hold them loosely, thinking: currently, this is my best approximation of this root (aspect of reality), but I know that a better approximation must exist, so I’m open to new perspectives. When we’re not so married to our beliefs, we’ll be more inclined to gather new information and perspectives to improve our understanding, and can mitigate irrationalities like selection bias.
Ultimately, every human - every individual mind - is a miniscule subset of of humanity, so an individual’s knowledge is a subset of humanity’s knowledge. And since humanity’s knowledge is limited, of course, the extent of an individual human’s knowledge is puny in comparison with everything to be known in existence.
Given the limitations of our minds in knowing everything there is to know, we have to accept the boundlessness of our ignorance. In the face of this boundlessness, when we are honest with ourselves about our limitations, absolute humility is the only rational response.
This is why we’re all fools. Ignorance is all we’ll ever truly know.
Through intellectual pursuits of knowledge with the mind, our only hope is to marginally reduce this ignorance. But the only way to do that - to truly reduce ignorance (and our foolishness) - is to accept the ignorance, to be conscious of the fact that we are fools. If we even briefly forget our fool status, we’ll latch onto some construction of our mind (or adopt someone else’s construction); if we fool ourselves that we are not fools, we’ll view our mental constructions as truth. We become double fools.
On a less ‘pure’ and more ‘applied’ philosophical note, I think a strong dose of humility (mentally ingested by most of us) would solve most of humanity’s issues.
For example, why start a war, when you’re aware that your reasoning for starting that war stems from your mind, and your mind is a limited tool for perceiving reality? How can you justify whatever atrocities you commit, when you accept that your worldview may be entirely mistaken?
Perhaps we’d recognise the stupidity of proudly pursuing our own material betterment at the expense of others’, if we had the humility to acknowledge the role of social context - co-produced by all of us - in enabling our relative gains, instead of ignorantly appealing to some notion of individual brilliance. Why commit to a particular lifestyle, or to upholding a status quo, if we’re aware that we don’t know whether it’s the best way to live? Why defend or submit to a particular socio-economic-political system if we know we don’t know everything, and so a better alternative may exist? Why be so adamant that there is no alternative, if we’re aware of the (large) extent of our ignorance?
If we’re not entirely convinced about the truth of our mental constructs, we’re less likely to fight for them; we’re more open to listening and gathering other perspectives. And I think that’s something worth (peacefully) fighting for.
So, root-finding is this. It’s a commitment to the humble pursuit of truth, acknowledging that the mind will never arrive at it, because we can’t intellectualise our way to ultimate truths.
But, to reduce ignorance, it’s not enough to simply acknowledge that ignorance - we must actively seek to reduce it, to become curious conscious fools…
Which fool are you?
The fool says, I know!
The curious fool says, I know, and I want to know more!
The conscious fool says, I don’t know.
The curious conscious fool says, I don’t know, but I want to know…
A fool assumes that they already know everything and lacks the motivation to learn more. A curious fool wants to accumulate additional knowledge, but assumes that what they already ‘know’ is truth. A conscious fool admits their ignorance, but lacks the drive to reduce it. A curious conscious fool (CCF) is a root-finder - someone whose deep understanding of their abundant ignorance propels them to intently and humbly search for truth.
We all fluctuate between the four kinds of fool, in different domains of knowledge. You might generally be a basic fool in politics, a curious fool in the study of human nature, a conscious fool in biology, a curious conscious fool when philosophising about the meaning of life, etc.
As humans, becoming CCFs in all aspects of life is our only hope of (maybe) successfully reducing the foolishness we’ve all been naturally endowed with. And root-finding (RF) is about actively pursuing this goal of remaining a curious conscious fool, forever.
So, RF is an approach to life. Root-finder, sceptic, scientist, philosopher, spiritual seeker, whatever - the label doesn’t matter. You don’t have to identify as a root-finder to be one; there have been many throughout history, and there exist many today, and hopefully a greater proportion in the future. And this blog/newsletter, Root-Finding, is just my contribution to humanity’s root-finding endeavour.
Below is an overview of how I’ll be approaching RF.
Root-Finding
I think of there being five kinds of root:
R0 - The Root - all of existence (and beyond?).
R1 - The causal roots of existence; ultimate truths within existence.
R2 - Our roots - where do we come from? These roots could be cosmic (origin of our planet and universe as we know it) or evolutionary (origin of our species, progression of human history).
R3 - Root network - what nourishes life? What allows us to connect, flourish, and connect in order to flourish?
R4 - Routes (homophone) to a better world - a world in which it’s easier for everyone to investigate the other roots, and generally flourish.
So, RF involves burrowing into reality (R0) to investigate the root causes (R1) of things, including problems pervading the world today - problems defined as such because they inhibit our flourishing (R3). And exploring our origins, evolution, and history (R2) helps us to better understand what allows us to truly thrive (R3), and hence, how to accordingly, collectively redesign our socio-economic-political-cultural systems to enable this for the most beings (R4).
This investigation can be reframed as three key questions - the root questions:
What exists? What is existence?
What is a good life? How can we lead a good life?
What kind of society would allow us to ask and answer (1) and (2)? How can we reorganise ourselves in pursuit of this?
Another way to understand the roots is as successive subsets, where:
R0 > R1 > R2 > R3 > R4.
Each set of roots is a portion of a prior, more fundamental set. The Root, R0, is just existence itself. R1 highlights causal chains within R0. R2 highlights all causal chains which relate to us (humans/Earthlings). R3 highlights segments of R2 that are relevant to our flourishing. Where R3 derives general ideas for flourishing, R4 highlights which of these ideas can be applied in the present, to progress us towards more flourishing.
Here are some guiding principles that will shape my personal RF methodology.
Generalisation
What can I know?
Since existence unifies everything, everything must be interconnected. Therefore, any phenomenon can be explained in relation to another. I.e., since the ultimate generalisation of ‘everything exists’ is possible, lower-order, less specific generalisations must also be possible.
Forever a Fool
I don’t know…
While generalisation is always possible, it’s never completely accurate. Any generalisation that is less general than ‘everything exists’ must be incomplete and flawed to some extent, because it does not incorporate the entirety of existence. So, our approximations of roots can always be improved.
A Curious Fool
…but I want to know.
A simple (conscious) fool admits defeat, throws in the towel and says, I don’t know, I’ll never know, and I don’t care. A root-finder is a curious conscious fool, driven by a deep longing to know. So, they make generalisations (curious), but remember that these generalisations are necessarily flawed (conscious), and so continuously seek to refine them (curious), etc.
First-Order Finding
I don’t know how to know.
Since our ignorance is limitless, a root-finder rejects exclusionary epistemic beliefs, recognising that if they don’t know what exists, they must necessarily also not know how to know what exists. So, a root-finder does not assume that strictly scientific methods, pure reason, empirical research, etc., are the only means to potentially discover truth.
More than Mind
What if I could know?
Given that absolute knowledge of everything in existence is impossible for the mind, which is a temporally and spatially limited instrument of the mortal, finite human being, a root-finder recognises the potential for non-intellectual means of knowing, and hence, understands and appreciates the value of trans-intellectual (spiritual) practices. If it were possible to discover ultimate truths, this would only be possible from beyond the mind.
Obviously, in true root-finding spirit, this framework is not gospel and will be subject to continuous refinement as I (consciously and curiously) decrease my foolishness. I invite you to expand it, critique it, develop your own version, etc. Above all, remain a conscious and curious fool.
Let’s find some roots.