When I cannot think about big things, which is most of the time, I think about small ones, instead. That was the singular lesson of my college education, the most useful principle that I extracted: to Understand takes Work and Time. It takes a tremendous amount of work and time. In fact, to even wrap your fingers around the root of an idea or subject and actually know what you’re talking about takes a lifetime of work and still, at the end of that lifetime, there is so much you don’t know, so much unavailable to you.
When I got to college, the doors of disciplines swung open: sociology, gender studies, astronomy, literature, political history. But what I noticed the most were the seemingly bottomless potholes of my own ignorance. I realized slowly and then suddenly that I…could not really tell you anything about anything. I still can’t tell you anything about most things. What was Prussia, really? What is the actual difference between socialism and communism? What is gravity? Why was the Korean War fought? What was Foucault’s whole deal? What’s the name of literally one Chinese leader who isn’t Mao? What do chromosomes do? How does the internet work? How has any machine ever worked?
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.
I once got mad at a friend who, when I asked her questions, would only say “I don’t know.” We were in the fourth grade, sitting at the top of my steep driveway. I asked her why her parents named her [redacted]. She said she didn’t know. I asked her questions about her favorite animal. She said she didn’t know those answers, either. At the time, her blasé attitude set me ablaze with Child Anger, but now I think she was the most grounded person I’ve ever met, and my adult life should be lived as an homage to her humility.
This is why journalism is both terrifying and enticing. When you write a story, you explain the world, or at least a world, to readers, and to do that well you must first explain it to yourself. And holy shit it is hard. I definitely thought it’d get easier with time, but I am four years in and it’s only gotten more impossible. Probably because my ambition has outpaced my skill set. This morning I was supposed to do journalism but the story I’m working on is about Big Themes like Power and Perspective and my brain just couldn’t rise to the occasion.
Instead, I spent 20 minutes on this AI meme generator website. Tap a button and it spits out nonsense. The images and text talk past each other on purpose. There is no cohesion, just random viral flotsam and jetsam bobbing around and occasionally colliding, like bumper cars.
There is no point. No big thoughts. No meaning. No center to find. No core to bore. Yet it pleased my big dumb smooth brain to click and conjure Internet gobbledygook. (Another thing I don’t know. How do you spell gobbeldygook? Goblegegook? Gobbledygoop? Gobblorp?)
Here is some mind mush I generated:
what?
what?
Actually this one is pretty good.