Chapter Seven: Navigating Solid, Liquid, and Mystical Knowledge
Part One: Solid and Liquid Knowledge
Readings:
“Feelings and Perceptions” by Thich Nhat Hanh
“Time is the Flux of Duration” by Henri Bergson
Key Dilemmas:
- Is any knowledge absolutely certain or solid?
- Is all knowledge uncertain or liquid?
- Is some knowledge certain enough?
- Is some knowledge not certain enough?
- How can we know how to tell the difference between the above suppositions?
- Thich Nhat Hanh tells us a story about a father who was certain of this son’s death, and that certainty prevented him from answering his door to a person claiming to be his son—believing him to be an imposter. In these days of accusations of “fake news,” how can we be certain of anything that we hear? For example, why do we trust Snopes.com, the website that validates or invalidates news claims? In conflicts, how can we know whether the disputants are telling the truth, or how can disputants be certain of the events that happened, creating the conflict, in the first place?\
When we are certain of something, then it provides a solid piece of knowledge that we can depend upon. When we are uncertain of something, then it is a liquid or flexible piece of knowledge.
- For religious people, the sacred texts of their religion provide the certainty for their values and beliefs. The support that they offer is often in the spiritual strength and community solidarity that is provided by their fundamental religious beliefs. However, “support” is not “proof.”
- Some people, who reject religious beliefs as absolutes, turn to science for certainty because it is based on the set of empirically-tested facts about the natural world. For these people, what can be empirically measured, with repeated testing, are facts that one can hold as certain. However, repeated testing and information from related fields of inquiry can challenge the certainty of “facts,” showing that older facts are not as certain as newer, more refined, facts. In other words, the solidity of outmoded facts is replaced with the stronger solidity of newly developed facts.
- A common science-based construction of the world is based on the belief that the universe is wholly made up of elements that can be measured, meaning that if an aspect of our world cannot be measured, then it must be illusory.
However, the above belief, like religious beliefs, cannot be empirically supported. And if it cannot be empirically supported, then it must be understood as an unprovable belief, just as religious beliefs are unprovable. Therefore, the view that only science can tell us what is a fact and what is illusion is just as problematic as religion telling us what is a fact and what is illusion.
- Of course, there are religious scientists who can navigate our world, knowing that all knowledge is somewhat of a leap of faith. In their leaps of faith, they find certainly in both science and religion.
- One might argue that a lot of good things, like technology, come out of scientific processes, so science must have a firm basis. It certainly has a firm basis in the material world of measurable objects, but it cannot navigate the world of creativity, personality, love, friendship, connection, profundity, emotion, and spiritual experiences. Of course, science believes that all of the above listed phenomena are the result of material processes in the brain, and not stand-alone aspects of our universe.
Maybe this is true, but such a reduction of love to brain and hormone processes certainly takes the romance out of the notion! Believers in love as an interpersonal, social, and spiritual force that is, at least somewhat, independent of brains and hormones, will reject the cold, dry reduction of love to the mechanical interaction of chemicals and brain processes.
- If science and religion cannot provide certainty, then what can provide certainty? I suggest, as Ludwig Wittgenstein has claimed, that certainty is situational and contextual. As I write this chapter, I have no doubt that I am awake and not dreaming. I have no doubt that my computer is real and will store what I write.
I have dreamed that I was typing on a computer and I have dreamed that my computer did not store my writing, but I only come to doubt whether I am awake, when the question comes up for consideration. The continuity of waking life is quite different from the discontinuity of dreams. Dreams don’t maintain context over time, and as the context of my writing in my office has not changed at all, I am secure in the certainty of my activity. We take a lot of things for granted, as we navigate our lives, and this “taking things for granted” is precisely the kind of certainty that we depend upon.
- Some people believe in God as a way to feel protected by God, keeping them and their loved ones out of danger. When tragedy strikes their lives, they can feel abandoned by God, as Jews in the Holocaust felt abandoned by God. Some people lose their belief in God, when they feel abandoned by God for many reasons. Their certainty was challenged because they thought they made a deal with God: they believed in God, and in return God would protect them. If God failed to protect us, then, like an insolvent insurance plan, we don’t trust in the power of God.
- Other people believe in God without expecting any protection. These people believe that God has a plan for everyone, and that they plan can seem mysterious at times. However, their faith is strengthened by other aspects of religious experience and community.
- Some people believe in a science-based universe, and that belief is all they need to feel that their lives are rich with meaning and significance. However, some people with this belief have a life-crisis, where their lives are drained of meaning and significance. How can they regain a life rich with meaning? If psychotherapy cannot provide help them regain a meaningful life, might these people need an experience more powerful than therapy? For some of these people, religious or mystical experience provides a new depth of meaning and significance.
- Life’s seemingly endless conflicts can drain our lives of meaning and significance. Might we turn to religious or mystical experience as a resource to regain our sense of a meaningful life—when no other choice seems to work? Those of us that want to manage our life’s conflicts better, or improve our careers as conflict facilitators, may need ways to find peace and meaning.
The Significance of Solid and Liquid Knowledge of Conflict Workers:
The lesson to be learned here is that everyone has beliefs that cannot be proven empirically, and even the knowledge, that has a history of empirical proof, can be wrong because of the way research is conducted, or the way that knowledge is framed within cultural traditions. However, there are certain facts that resist doubt, such as the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This is an empirically-tested fact, that will be true until the sun deteriorates to the extent that it cannot hold earth into orbit, or some giant asteroid strikes earth and sends it catapulting out into deep space. For people working with conflict, the key is to help people stuck in their beliefs to be a little more open-minded to the beliefs of others. And psychologically, being open-minded to the possibility of some new beliefs might help us find more rich experiences and happiness.
In Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Feelings and Perceptions,” there is an exploration of solid and liquid thinking, as well as an inquiry into the limits and possibilities of perception within his Buddhist, Eastern, tradition. In the Buddhist tradition, humans are capable of living with more uncertainty about the details of our lives, while also expanding our experiences into the peaceful realm of timelessness and space-less-ness.
Henri Bergson’s “Time is the Flux of Duration,” approaches the same experience suggested by Thich Nhat Hanh. However, Bergson works within the Western tradition of thought. He explains the reasoning behind Western philosophy’s more traditional view of time, as an abstract matrix, similar to space. Both time and space are defined as measurements within Western science’s cognitive framing of our empirical world.
After giving this view its proper validation, Bergson posits an alternative view that avoids the notion of measurement and, instead, focuses on the experience of time as duration. This second view shifts from the traditional abstract understanding of time to the visceral, sensory experience of time-going-by. Interestingly, an experience-based understanding can also illuminate the notion of timelessness, when we do not experience any time going by—we are lost in the moment, as we do not notice any time passing.
Similarly, we might also look at the notion of space, and break with the notion of space as a measurable matrix, and focus on space as the experience of the space around us as spacious or confining, orderly or messy, private or public, finite and infinite. And as in timelessness, we can also think of space–less–ness as the sensation that the whole universe is present to us, rather than distant and absent.
Interestingly, these notions of timelessness and space–less–ness are key to indigenous beliefs, as well as some other religious mystical traditions from other cultures and parts of the world.
Being aware of these different ways to think about time, space, religion, connection, and experience will help conflict workers navigate the variety of beliefs, sensibilities, and experiences that disputants bring to a conflict. In this way, conflict workers’ understanding of these differences can keep the collaborative process fully inclusive.
Furthermore, conflict facilitators’ study of these various ways of experiencing the world can help them find the most connected and peaceful way of being in the midst of stressful conflicts. When we, as conflict facilitators, create a space as free of the constraints of stress, free of the forces of exclusion, free of the constraints of time and space, we can help disputants be calm, connected, empathetic. In this atmosphere, we can improve our ability to navigate the space between disputants, using the methods suggested at the beginning of this book, as well as other appropriate strategies.
Discussion Questions:
1. What is liquid knowledge?
Liquid knowledge is the affirmation that knowledge is often contextual, and is ideally placed on a spectrum across a continuum. Therefore, liquid knowledge is contrasted with solid knowledge, where knowledge is thought to transcend context to become a fixed “universal.” This notion of solid or fixed knowledge is often based on polarized categories, where something Is right or wrong, good or evil, hate or love, smart or dumb, etc. Interestingly, this contrast of solid and liquid knowledge may, mistakenly, become a polarized way of understanding knowledge (solid vs. liquid), not a flexible way of understanding knowledge (more solid/less liquid; more liquid/less solid).Therefore, we need to start again in defining solid and liquid knowledge, not as polarized categories, but on a continuum where solid knowledge is at one end of a continuum of knowledge, and liquid knowledge is on the other end of the continuum—and muddy in-between. Such a continuum affirms that there are certain kinds of certainty that can be thought of a reasonably solid, transcending context, such as our faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that we can trust that the physical world will not suddenly disappear, and that our bodies, communities, and world arc toward healing and reconciliation, rather than sickness and alienation (as urged by Martin Luther King).
At the other side of this continuum of knowledge, there are more liquid kinds of knowledge that are less certain, but more flexible to adapt to a given circumstance with nuance and insight.
2. How is CR biased by its commitment to dogmatic/solid thinking?
The following are examples of dogmatic or solid ways that mainstream conflict resolution processes impede progress with disputants who are differently oriented:
- Processes that are comfortable for mainstream white people should also be comfortable for people of other races and cultures. (Not always)
- Conflict resolution should proceed by combining the self-interests of the disputants. (Not always)
- Disputants will get along better after having a conflict resolved with a mediator. (Not always)
- Disputants are generally comfortable sharing their feelings. (Not always)
- Disputants want their mediator to be neutral. (Not always)
- Disputants should never interrupt each other (Not always)
- Disputants should never raise their voices. (Not always)
The common mediation practices, above, are actually highly contextualized in the context of mainstream communication standards. They may not be appropriate for one or more disputants. Conflict workers need to adapt their processes to the comfort level of disputants. When disputants have different ways of working with conflict, the facilitator needs to adapt the process to something that is acceptable to all disputants—as much as possible.
3. What are the consequences, when it is assumed that pre-suppositional beliefs are true, and therefore “solid”?
If someone assumes that their presuppositions are absolutely true, then they have sealed themselves off from other possibilities. If my belief in God is assumed to be absolutely true, then other beliefs that do not factor in God’s existence are ruled out as false. If my belief that science proceeds from rock-bottom assumptions, including that the only entities that exist are those that can be measured, then I have ruled out the possibility that immeasurable entities, like spirits, immaterial personalities, and immaterial connections between people are illusions or hallucinations.
If we don’t believe that our presuppositions are absolutely true, then we open our lives up to alternative presuppositions—all of which are not provable, but yet my resonate with our experiences. Conflict facilitators may be more successful if they do not have absolute presuppositions because they will seem more open-minded.
4. What beliefs can be taken as certain and true?
- Everyday life has many features that, in most instances, are hard to question, such as:
- The ground will support us.
- The bodies of living creatures die at some point.
- The air is relatively safe to breath.
- People we know do not drastically change their identity.
- The wheels of the economy churn along.
- Climate change is real and we must make many changes to avoid human extinction.
Each of these statements can be challenged in certain ways at certain times, but generally, they are true. When presented with any claim to truth, there is a way to question it. Descartes thought that what we take as reality could have been constructed by an evil demon. A few contemporary philosophers claimed that our reality could be a computer simulation, created by a superior form of life. However, we do not go through our day worrying that the ground might not support us, unless there are clear indications of a landslide or earthquake.
5. How interrelated are notions of truth, complexity, dogmatism, certainty, and order?
All of these terms are abstractions, that have no particular context. They are mapping devices, but not actual things or places. They may help us navigate conceptually, but they can be misused.
6. How do abstractions and logic become the basis for knowledge?
Most philosophers and theoreticians work with abstractions at their supposed logical relations. They are conceptual mappers, who believe that the maps represent knowledge in its fullness. However, indigenous, nonliterate people, ordinary language philosophers, some feminists, and some existentialists, do not trust mapping systems, when they do not match their experiences. Even mapmakers themselves realize that maps have errors and are in a constant state of revision.
7. How do experience and context become a basis for knowledge?
Every person, whether experienced-based or theory-based, probably live their lives with a certain level of abstract knowledge and a certain level of contextual knowledge. On this continuum, there are people whose knowledge is mostly experience-based, at one end of a continuum, and people whose knowledge is mostly theory based.
8. Is it possible and practical to suppose that paradox, simplicity/elegance, uncertainty, relativism, chaos, mystery, and recognizing the limits of knowledge can become a way of navigating conflict?
Yes, I am suggesting that the above are the best ways for conflict workers to think about the world. Sometimes there is paradox, sometimes simplicity and elegance, sometimes uncertainty, sometimes relativism, sometimes chaos, sometimes mystery—but overall, there are limits to our knowledge.
9. How does Bergson’s view of time and space create a way to experience timelessness and space-less-ness?
If we can release ourselves from the constraints of conceiving of time and space as external measuring systems, and imaging that timelessness is an intriguing “now,” and space-less-ness is an intriguing connection between ourselves and the infinite “out there,” then we are on our way to the Bergsonian reality. Key to this transformation is the necessity to attain peace in our lives, to escape the past that haunts us, and the future that scares us. This is not easy, and many people commit their lives to reach this kind of peace. For us ordinary mortals, whatever steps we can take in the Bergsonian direction, are positive steps toward resolving conflicts and stronger connections between us.
