#3: A Hall of Mirrors

Ignorance is bliss. And I agree.

To not be troubled by the limitations of our knowing—contained by the seduction of our awareness and the diligence toward our advancement.

To seek knowledge as a sign of intellectual humility, a pathway to growth, a grid for understanding reality, but still as the condition that perpetuates ignorance.

The blissfulness of ignorance here isn’t about protection from truth or knowledge, but the quiet immunity granted by the limits of our perception.

Focus creates blindness. What we choose to see, by contrast, alienates us from what else is there to see. When we stay looking forward, we cannot see what is behind us. And our awareness is crippled by the realization that the eye that sees, only sees through the eyes that see. We are limited by the very idea that what we can know is filtered by what we already know—that our lens can only capture the image it is shaped to recognize, and that every act of perception is also an act of exclusion.

Therefore, our pursuit of knowledge hides within it blissful ignorance—the automatic immunity that our frame cannot capture all that there is outside of it. The eye can only see the eye through the eye, making the eye its own limitation.

It is for this reason Socrates declared, “I know that I know nothing.” Not as a moral failing, but as awareness that knowledge creates the condition for ignorance. It seeks not to eradicate it, but to provide a frame for understanding. To reveal our hidden loyalties, subconscious strategies, and interpretive filters. To see why we see and how we see. It is why knowledge does not set free; truth does. Knowledge, instead, creates the necessary conditions for truth to be revealed. And truth is revealed where ignorance is accepted and exposed. And for ignorance to be accepted and exposed is to embrace genuine inquiry. To be aware of the limitations of your perception, regardless of the porosity of your education and to function from this awareness. Not as defeat but as true enlightenment.

The unawareness of this is what I have consistently referred to as META-IGNORANCE. The prefix, Meta is quite intentional and not for linguistic theatrics. The idea I present does not villanize ignorance. It does not speak to ignorance as failing or as non-knowledge. What it does speak to is the resistance to and unawareness of our un-knowing.

To ensure, my thoughts are accurately represented, I shall define or express what I mean by ignorance as non-knowledge and ignorance as un-knowing.

Ignorance as non-knowledge is simply the absence of information—a gap that can be filled, a fact not yet learned, a skill not yet acquired. It is the state of not knowing something that exists to be known. This form of ignorance is neutral, remediable, and even expected. We cannot know everything, and the acknowledgment of what we don’t know in this sense is itself a form of knowledge. When I say “I don’t know how to code” or “I don’t know the meaning of catastrophe,” I am recognizing a specific absence that could, in principle, be addressed through learning.

Ignorance as un-knowing, however, is more elusive. It is the condition of not knowing that we don’t know, or more precisely, not knowing what it would mean to know in domains that exceed our current modes of understanding. When a child asks “why can’t we just print more money so everyone is rich?”, it isn’t a simple absence of economic knowledge, but the inability to perceive that the structure of the question itself is nonsensical. That there is an entire economic system invisible to the child, and they cannot recognize that this blindness exists. This is ignorance as un-knowing. And, it is not the gap between question and answer, but the blindness to the fact that a gap exists at all.

META-IGNORANCE, then, is the ignorance of this un-knowing—the failure to recognize that our frameworks for understanding are themselves limited and limiting. It is the state of being unaware that we are operating within constraints we cannot see, asking questions shaped by assumptions we haven’t examined, and mistaking the boundaries of our comprehension for the boundaries of what can be comprehended.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Meta-ignorance, in this sense, is not only invisible to the person experiencing it. It can also feel like certainty, clarity, and comprehensive understanding. The idea, therefore, is that we have no way of knowing we are blind because the structure of our seeing does not allow us to recognize blindness. So, the more complete our knowledge seems within our current frame, the less able we are to recognize the frame itself.

This is what Socrates meant when he declared he knew nothing and offered the path to good living as examination. Because in truth, the unexamined life is not worth living.

The reality, though, is knowledge comes with its own contours. Its accumulation creates its own darkness. In fact, every knowledge approach efficiently curates ignorance. It guides what should be known, what is intelligible and what is permissible. The very idea of a curriculum is inclusion as well as exclusion. What cannot be taken into context becomes our blindness. There are books you do not know that exists, philosophies that might dissolvethe coherence of your curent politic. Yet, because they fall outside your map of the knowable, they do not appear as absences…they simply do not appear.

When we say that we know, what we often mean is that we know within. WIthin a framework that shapes not just our answers and perspectives, but the very form of our questions..the very field of possibility. When we say we are growing in knowledge, it is not the same as growing in truth. We are growing within defined boundaries of what should be known and what counts as accurate. It is why within certain religious and political circles, questions are treated with scorn. Because the very nature of questioning reveals ignorance. It suggests that there is something else that could be known and this negates most ideas on faith, patriotism, and belief. You do not question God, they say…even when the God presented carries with it gaps you cannot un-see.

In my last essay, I wrote on systems of captivity and how we learn to remain in the cage. How power becomes an illusion when our consciousness has been held captive by the demands of the cage. And how, our compliance to these demands domesticate us into orienting ourselves by the cage. So we are captives with the illusion of freedom. The cage, I wrote, is not literal. It speaks to the cage of our thinking, built by the infrastructure of our information diet and tamed by the cruelty of systemic-induced necessities.

Here, I speak more specifically to knowledge as a domesticated field, as the architecture of the cage itself. We often imagine knowledge as the escape from the cage but rarely ask what formed the cage in the first place. Why does it exist? And for whom? Is the promise indeed freedom or is it order? Are our systems of knowing oriented towards freedom as we intend or freedom as determined? Do we even know freedom as we intend?

How about knowledge? What guides our pursuit of knowledge? Is it the same system’s sales-pitch of freedom or is it a vaguely understood concept of growth? Indulge me for a bit…why do you seek knowledge?

In one of my lectures, I posed the question, “Why knowledge?” to a small group of curious thinkers and intentional doers. Answers flew round the room and as I probed their responses, the energy in the room deflated. Not negatively, not because their answers were wrong and definitely not because I offered the right answer. But because they realized they had not thought to examine their noble pursuit of knowledge. It was noble, yes but never interrogated. And the thing with assumption is, it is inverted for compliance.

It is easy to say that the goal of all knowledge is application but this is not just untrue but creates a form of aversion to critical thought. Because the emphasis on application would often coincide with the necessity for reflection. Reflection as inquiry not reflection as reinforcement.

The first time my inquiry took me on that detour, my response was to simply know, to be curious. But then, that would be self-deception. We never really just know or just do. Our curiosity is sculpted by desire no matter how subtle. Whether to grow in truth, to grow in control, to grow in knowledge or to maintain our image, there is a self-evident good we are oriented towards. To deny this is to deceive ourselves. We are constantly oriented towards some measure of control. Whether to control how we are perceived because we want to be seen in our brilliance, or to control our relationship with reality so we can better handle certainty and be more invulnerable to the rudeness of life’s awakening. The undertone of this is: the why of our seeking is the very contour that modifies our seeing.

The thought leader who wants to be seen as smart would assume knowledge but would tend to meta-ignorance because their fixation is on the performance of thought not the surrender to truth itself. Their seeking is shaped by the need for validation. For the recognition that comes with being seen as smart. They assume truth but what they seek is insight that sounds impressive, ideas that carry intellectual prestige, and concepts that elicit the nod of an audience. The only thoughts they allow dismantle them are those they want to wear like an armor. To brand as “once I was blind, now I can see” even though their so-called seeing is just a more sophisticated form of blindness. It is a classic play out of the playbook of domination.

Today, we judge our discipline and quest for growth by our capacity for knowledge consumption. The problem is we do not consume for health, we consume to be full. Knowledge, in this frame, becomes a commodity, a currency for status, identity, and the illusion of mastery. Helpful for “having” as described in the last essay but unhelpful for truly being. Not because knowledge in itself is corrupted as religious people would like to believe but because it shields meta-ignorance. It creates a hall of mirrors where thinking transmutes into self-deception and knowledge into ignorance.

To critique our relationship with knowledge is not to advocate for its rejection. That would be anti-intellectualism, which is meta-ignorance disguised as common sense. Those who reject knowledge in the guise of liberation or awakening, those who confuse skepticism with cynicism are another kind of prisoner, just in a different cell. They claim to see beyond the illusion, yet their rebellion is precisely what the cage requires to sustain itself. Every system needs its heretics. And many times, it creates them.

There’s a reason why propaganda, conspiracy theories and media narratives exist. It is because knowledge is the most efficient tool for control when disguised as liberation. We surrender our autonomy in the very act of thinking we’re claiming it. Our thinking is arrested by the hall of mirrors created by the avalanche of consistent ideas that upholds our why of knowing. This is why that interrogation is necessary. Because the more knowledge we accumulate within a given system, the more shielded we are to the real context of others outside of it.

In the Prime TV Series, The Boys, we see Stormfront—Homelander’s girlfriend and member of The Seven—convince Ryan, Homelander’s son that “bad people” wanted to kill them for the color of their skin and referred to this as “white genocide.” It was hilarious to watch but relevant to notice. It wasn’t about truth. It was about who could organize knowledge that fit his moral presuppositions enough to trigger his allegiance to their camp.

And that is the most elegant form of control. Not restriction of what you can know but organization of how you know, what counts as knowing, and why you seek to know in the first place.

The infrastructure of our information diet does not merely liberate us. It conceals us from the image of all that is possible. This is why ignorance is weaponized; systemically and personally—to prevent us(or yourself) from confronting any possibility that does not fit our carefully curated worldview.

A husband diagnosed with cancer chooses to hide this diagnosis from his wife and attributes his growing weakness to something more acceptable so she doesn’t have to bear the pain of losing him. He does this not out of cruelty or love but to control her access to grief until he decides she’s ready. But what he cannot see is that he isn’t shielding her from pain but actually stealing her time to prepare for it. He has given her a curated reality that constructs her hall of mirrors. Where every moment she had shared was reinforcing her understanding of the state she knew not the state that was true. He believes he is saving her yet she has no way of even knowing she is being saved. That’s meta-ignorance. The wife does not know that she does not know and what he tells himself his mercy is in fact, control.

Now, how do you know what you do not know if the scope of your knowing has been infiltrated? We react to news organized to elicit a specific emotion. We cultivate ideologies from knowledge organized to contain our window of possibility. We think only thoughts in our heads, accept it as profound and call it critical thinking. Our methods of self-assessment never truly assesses the self, only re-arranges it. We perform awareness whereas we are simply polishing our ignorance—the hall of mirrors must be spotless at all costs.

It is why every character has a fan. Every foolish idea has its crusaders. Every tweet has resonance. And every reality TV personality has their supporters. We do not just support or advocate for what we believe or know. We do, to protect and uphold our hall of mirrors. This is also why debate feels like self-criticism. Why disagreement feels like combat. We cannot hold difference or nuance because our identity is maintained by resonance to the ideas that built it.

This is why we perform certainty. Because certainty maintains identity. To say “I think” or “it seems to me” or “I could be wrong” is to lose authority before you’ve even made your argument. This is taught as principle. We’ve learned that we must never begin a statement with “I think,” because the human mind requires conviction not accuracy. Our world must make sense, even though the sense it makes is nonsensical —as long as it secures the self who must live inside it. This is the function of certainty: to stabilize identity and live coupled up. Any idea that contest against our created constraints becomes war on who we are. It is why we argue with so much emotion. It is often not passion as we’d like to think but the preservation of our hall of mirrors. To ensure that our echo-chamber is protected. Growth, in this frame, is often redecoration under the illusion of movement.

This is the most intimate form of captivity. When the hall of mirrors doesn’t just surround us but is us.

The question isn’t whether we can live without dwelling in the hall of mirrors but if we can, like Socrates, learn to live well within it, knowing it for what it is. To hold awareness of our blindness without demanding the comfort of sight or counterfeit certainty. Perhaps, the goal isn’t to escape illusion, but to see our reflection and not look away. Not to know more but to know differently. Not to be merely free, but to choose what binds us.

If the knowledge that defines you is also what confines you, would you still want to know who you are?