Knowing and not-knowing
It is common for people to both know and yet not know something at the same time. Sometimes we call it "not noticing," or "avoidance" or "denial"; sometimes we call it "repression" or "forgetting,"and sometimes we call it "ignoring reality." Sometimes we must call it plain "stupid."
There are many levels of "not knowing," including the always-challenging "not knowing that you're not knowing" (as in the charming Elvis ditty here: I Forgot to Remember to Forget Her. )
There's usually a pretty good reason for "not knowing" something we subliminally know, or suspect: it's almost always to avoid anxiety, worry, pain, loss, shame, guilt, weakness, inconvenience, conflict with others, conflict within ourselves, and other sorts of discomforts.
When we refuse to know what we know, and we act on our "not-knowing", it usually works out badly. Still, it happens all the time, to the best of us. And we all know far more than we want to be aware of about ourselves, and about what goes on around us. "No brain, no pain". When I was in my analysis, which all psychoanalysts must undergo to cleanse the scalpel, so to speak, my analyst used to refer to "un-thought thoughts," which I find to be a very valuable concept in life and in my work as a shrink. Such unthought-thoughts can effect us in all sorts of sneaky ways, beneath our awareness or beyond our willingness to confront them directly. They effect us because there is ultimately no escape from the ideas in our heads, except death. Or maybe good therapy. But there are many such thoughts that we need to know, and need to face, to be fully in reality.
Still, we all waste energy avoiding some of our thoughts. I advise people to sometimes turn off their car radios, put down the book, don't have that second Scotch, step away from that computer monitor (but not Maggie's Farm), turn off the boob tube, listen to those thoughts that drop down in the middle of the night - and confront them. It's not fun, but it is worthwhile: we have a lot to tell ourselves, if we would only listen. It's analogous to prayer: sometimes we need to shut the hell up and listen.
Therefore it is fascinating to me, but not surprising, to see that there is a defineable neurophysiological correlate to such common occurences: why not blame it on your brain and let yourself off the hook? Science Daily.
