The Incomprehensibility of Sense-Making
This is a post about nothing…and everything. And all else in between.
This post is about ‘Posturing’ and the gas that fills the air that makes it all possible. The oxygen that feeds it and the carbon molecules that it exudes.
It’s a post about life and death and sasquatches.
But to get into the spirit – to dive deep and stay shallow – you need to watch this from Reggie Watts.
Here is one particular gem from his talk.
- Now with the allocation and the understanding of the lack of understanding, we enter into a new era of science in which we feel nothing more than so much so as to say that those within themselves comparary or non-comparary will figuratively figure into the folding or our non-understanding and partial understanding to the networks of which we all draw our source and conclusions from.
What is Reggie saying?
He’s pointing to our insane need to understand and if we can’t understand – to posture. The words sound deep, well put-together, and thought-through, but what he’s doing is ‘having a piss’ at pseudo-intellectualism and our desire to posture rather than be who and what we are.
Bonus points: Reggie is also using the TED forum to point out the ridiculousness of the TED forum.
I fully recognize that we are in an anti-intellectualism era. Exhibit A: The 45th President of the USA – but it would be too easy to put all the blame on him. He is merely a byproduct of this latest fad. The latest response to the perception that it is intellectual elitism that many folks feel is keeping them down.
What I love about Reggie Watts, and he’s done this throughout his career is that he challenges us to think. To think. It’s interesting to me because we are such a “Go Go Go” culture, especially in technology, that we don’t stop and think. Have you ever been to a restaurant and heard the music skip or play the same song on repeat? What about the last restaurant that you went to? Did it play music? Or the last 5 restaurants?
My point here is that we just tune things out unless something seems off. We don’t hear or notice. Or think. In other words, the data for ‘normal’ gets tossed out for the more interesting, the more different. We sometimes need someone to challenge our sense-making.
References and Resources
Reggie Watts on the Earliest Show