American Dream wrote:Canadian_watcher wrote:American Dream wrote:
This brings to mind the immortal teachings of that great master of wisdom- Donald Rumsfeld:
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. ”
indeed. He is vile but he is right about that. I remember the context when he said it, and I find it disgusting, however, that statement is correct.
Slavoj Zizek commented on this in his piece What Rumsfeld Doesn't Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib and his words are also relevant to the Intelligent Design issue itself:
In March 2003, Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur philosophizing about the relationship between the known and the unknown: "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." What he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the "unknown knowns," the things we don't know that we know-which is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the "knowledge which doesn't know itself," as Lacan used to say.
If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the "unknown unknowns," that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the "unknown knowns" - the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values.
Thanks for that AD,
RI is the only place I know where a Zen anarcho-libertarian cybersocialist like myself can find himself agreeing with Donald Rumsfeld AND Slavoj Zizek - in the same post!
