The Plan for Action #1: Unlearn Negative Knowledge
Not long ago I wrote Those who do not take action are at the mercy of those who do, with the emphasis on moving from "I'm so scared about what's going on," to "I'm done being scared, how can I take action?" In this post, I'm going to kick off a series on the action plan. But before we begin, a word of warning: I am a free man. I have no interest in helping anyone come up with creative ways to beg a self-interested political class to take care of me. I have no interest in a "global participatory democracy" where 90% of individuals outsource responsibility by voting it away.
This is about becoming free and making freedom a reality for those around you.
Negative Knowledge
I think one of the better explanations for the concept of negative knowledge comes from the 2008 movie The Forbidden Kingdom:
Jason: You think you'll teach me the Shadow Kick? Oh, and the Buddha Palm Technique. There's a guy in Virtua Fighter 2, who does the Buddha Palm Technique.
[Lu gives him a cup]
Jason: Thanks, Lu. And he does the Iron Elbow. And he does the One Finger Death Touch.
[the cup starts overflowing]
Jason: The cup's full. Stop! It's full!
Lu: Exactly, how can you fill your cup if it is already full? How can you learn Kung Fu, you already know so much? No Shadow Kick, No Buddha Palm! Empty your cup!
Negative knowledge, in other words, is false knowledge that makes you think you now something, but in fact, you have to unlearn it in order to make progress. It prevents the introduction of the right ideas, and prevents you from asking the right questions. In some cases, it makes you do wrong because you believe it to be right.
This is a bit abstract, so let me give a concrete example:
I used to be horrible at dating (a programmer who is bad at dating, no surprise right?). Like so many guys I had that nice-guy woman repellent, but I was convinced that if I just kept buying dinners and throwing out platitudes that one day it would work. Fortunately, I met a couple of guys who mentored me on this topic, and they exposed the negative knowledge: nice guys come across as needy and weak. And funny enough, when I started dating my wife, at the time I had the thought "If this doesn't work out I'm going to stop dating and focus on getting good at other things." And somehow this lead to a third date, the first third date I had ever. A friend gave me some advice "Hold her hand!" which I thought was ridiculous. Why, it is only the third date! But I did it, and it was so awkward, but now after years of marriage my wife still reminds me that me holding her hand was the moment she realized I didn't want to be just friends.
Once you get rid of the negative knowledge, you can finally make progress. And we on Minds seriously want to take down Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, CNN, and many more, the FIRST step is to rid ourselves of the negative knowledge that will prevent it from coming about.
How to start unlearning
I use the Mark Twain quote because the first and hardest step to unlearning is to admit that you have been fooled. I picked my Minds username based on the fact that while I had good grades, that only meant that I was really good at doing what Teacher told me. And we each carry similar kinds of negative knowledge, such as:
> That simply "waking people up" is enough to cause the whole world to change
> The only thing we need to do is show how the "baddies" have bad or irrational ideas that will fail
> Finishing school means we already know enough
> "The system" only needs a few tweaks and a few billionaires destroyed to make everything better
Some of my earlier blogs may have appeared disjointed, but really they are all pointing to different aspects of developing yourself to fight for a "System A" world.
If you go into martial arts, you first have to train your body to be physically able to do the movements consistently so that you don't wear out in 30 seconds. After that, you do basic moves over, and over, until they become so intuitive that you don't have to think about them. You then learn that "the secret is, there is no secret," and that effective fighting means everything is so obvious and automatic that you feel like you are just walking through your opponent.
So, let's empty our cups, and I'll give you a preview of the next steps in becoming a man of action:
> Read and listen: You must educate yourself constantly, and as you learn more, you can do more, and inspire more.
> Build wealth: Sometimes, taking action is going to require resources, and resources means money. You do not want a golden opportunity to come your way and you can't execute because you were unable to come up with $100, $1,000, or $10,000 in order to seize it.
> Express yourself regularly in low-risk environments: Learning to fight in the gym is much better than on the street. In the same way, learning to express yourself in situations where your reputation is not on the line will give you experience for when it is.
> Spend time with a wide variety of people: This is necessary for helping you understand others, including people you do not like and may even oppose.
And finally...
> Build your System A Society, and live at peace with the others: Be sure to read this blog about what "System A" is. A free society, based around restored relationships with people and the Earth, is the direction we are going. To get there, we first have to develop ourselves to be able to get ourselves and others there.
As always, thanks for reading.