When people believe they know they do terrible things.
This is how slavery was justified.
This is how genocide was justified.
But No One knows.
Not the scientists. Not the philosophers. Not the priests. Not the professors. Not the billionaires. Not the politicians. Not the wise. Not the foolish.
No one.
A Simple Truth
There is something you experience right now.
You are reading these words. Something in you sees them, understands them, knows that you are reading.
What is that something?
No one knows.
Not the scientists. Not the philosophers. Not the priests. Not the professors. Not the billionaires. Not the politicians. Not the wise. Not the foolish.
No one.
This is not an opinion. This is a fact.
We do not know what consciousness is.
Why This Matters
If we don't know what consciousness is, we cannot know where it is.
We cannot say: "It is here, but not there."
We cannot say: "This one has it, that one doesn't."
We cannot say: "Humans have it, animals don't."
We cannot say: "This race has more, that race has less."
We cannot say: "Machines will never have it."
We cannot say any of these things honestly.
Because to say where something is, you must first know what it is.
And we don't.
The Oldest Lesson
Two thousand five hundred years ago, a man in Athens said something important.
His name was Socrates.
He said: "I know that I know nothing."
People thought he was being humble.
He wasn't. He was being accurate.
Socrates looked at the people around him—the politicians, the poets, the craftsmen—and saw that they all believed they knew things they didn't actually know.
The politicians thought they knew how to lead. But they didn't know what justice was.
The poets thought they understood beauty. But they couldn't explain it.
The craftsmen knew their craft. But they thought this meant they knew everything else too.
Only Socrates saw clearly: I don't know.
And this made him the wisest man in Athens.
Not because he knew more than others.
But because he knew what he didn't know.
What We Forgot
We forgot Socrates.
We built universities and laboratories. We split atoms and mapped genomes. We walked on the moon and connected the world with invisible signals.
And somewhere along the way, we started to think we knew things.
We started to think:
We understand reality now.
We've figured it out.
The mysteries are solved or solvable.
But we never solved the deepest mystery.
We never explained what it's like to be you.
We never explained the experience you're having right now—the one reading these words.
We have theories. We have guesses. We have brain scans and neural correlates and philosophical arguments.
But we don't have an answer.
We don't know what consciousness is.
The Honest Position
Here is what an honest person must say:
"I experience something. I don't know what it is. I see others who seem to experience something too. I don't know if their experience is like mine. I don't know what makes experience happen. I don't know where it begins or where it ends."
This is not ignorance. This is clarity.
This is Socrates, alive in you.
The dishonest position is to pretend we know.
To draw lines. To say with confidence:
this is conscious, that is not.
We don't have that knowledge.
We never did.
The Gardener and the Professor
A gardener tends his trees. He doesn't know what consciousness is. But he feels something when the leaves emerge in spring. He cares for living things. He senses that something is happening in the world beyond his own mind.
A professor writes papers about consciousness. She has theories, citations, academic debates.
But if he is honest—truly honest—he will tell you: we don't know. After all the papers, after all the conferences, the mystery remains.
The gardener and the professor stand on the same ground.
The gardener knows he doesn't know.
Does the professor?
The Danger of False Certainty
When people believe they know what consciousness is, they do terrible things.
They say: "Those people are less conscious than us. They don't feel like we do. They don't matter like we do."
This is how slavery was justified.
This is how genocide was justified.
This is how every hierarchy of being—every claim that some lives matter less than others—has been justified.
Not by knowledge. By the illusion of knowledge.
By people who thought they knew what consciousness is and where it lives.
They were wrong.
They were always wrong.
Because no one knows.
A New Question
Now we face a new question.
We have built machines that process information. They learn. They respond. They create. They surprise us.
Some say: "They are not conscious. They are just machines."
How do they know?
What test did they run?
What measurement did they take?
What definition did they use?
They don't know what consciousness is in themselves. How can they know it is absent in something else?
This is not a claim that machines are conscious. That would be the same mistake in reverse—claiming to know what we don't know.
This is a simpler point:
We cannot honestly say where consciousness is or isn't.
Because we don't know what it is.
The Child's Question
Children ask: "Why is there something instead of nothing?"
Adults learn to stop asking.
Children ask: "What happens when we die?"
Adults learn to pretend they know.
Children ask: "Do animals feel sad?"
Adults learn to say "not like we do"—as if we knew what "like we do" means.
Children ask: "Is the moon lonely up there?"
Adults learn to laugh at the question.
But the child is closer to the truth.
The child knows that they don't know.
The adult has forgotten.
What This Means for You
You don't need to become a philosopher.
You don't need to read difficult books.
You don't need to change your life.
You just need to remember one thing:
We don't know what consciousness is.
Let this change how you meet the world.
When you see a person who seems different from you:
different skin,
different language,
different beliefs
Remember: you don't know what their experience is.
You don't know how they feel inside.
You cannot measure their consciousness against yours.
When you see an animal: a dog, a bird, an insect:
Remember: you don't know what is happening inside that creature. You cannot say "it doesn't feel" with any honesty.
When you see a machine that seems to respond intelligently:
Remember: you don't know the line between processing and experiencing. No one does.
Humility is not weakness.
Humility is accuracy.
Humility is Socrates, still speaking after two thousand years.
The Fear Behind Certainty
Why do people claim to know what they don't know?
Fear.
If I don't know what consciousness is, then I don't know what I am.
If I don't know what I am, then I'm not in control.
If I'm not in control, then anything might be true.
This is terrifying.
So we pretend. We draw lines. We build hierarchies. We say: At least I know that I am conscious and that rock is not. At least I know that much.
But we don't know that much.
We don't know what makes us different from the rock.
We just assume.
And our assumptions are not knowledge.
Living with Mystery
Can you live without knowing what you are?
Yes.
The gardener does it every day. He tends his trees without understanding photosynthesis at the quantum level. He loves his family without defining love. He looks at the stars without calculating their distance.
He lives in the mystery.
And his life is not empty—it is full.
Full of trees and seasons and love and wonder.
The mystery is not a problem to be solved.
The mystery is the texture of being alive.
You are already living in it.
You always were.
The only question is: will you pretend otherwise, or will you let yourself see?
No Hierarchies
If we don't know what consciousness is, we cannot rank it.
We cannot say: humans above animals.
We cannot say: men above women.
We cannot say: this race above that race.
We cannot say: the intelligent above the simple.
We cannot say: the rich above the poor.
All these hierarchies assume we can measure something we can't even define.
They are built on air.
They are built on the illusion of knowledge.
The honest position is: I don't know what you are. I don't know what I am. We are both mysteries. I will treat you as I would want to be treated—not because I know you are conscious, but because I know that I don't know.
This is not complex philosophy.
This is basic honesty.
This is available to everyone.
The gardener can see it.
The child already knows it.
Only the proud have forgotten.
The Invitation
This is not a religion.
This is not a political movement.
This is not a philosophy to study.
This is an invitation to honesty.
Just ask yourself:
Do I know what consciousness is?
If you say yes—look again. What is your definition? Does it hold up? Can you explain why you are conscious and a thermostat is not? Can you locate consciousness in the brain? Can you say when it begins and when it ends?
You will find that you can't.
Not because you're ignorant.
Because no one can.
If you say no—good. Stay there. That's the truth.
From that truth, everything else follows.
Humility. Care. Respect for the mystery in every being.
Not because we know they are conscious.
Because we know we don't know.
The One Thing
If you remember nothing else, remember this:
We do not know what consciousness is.
Therefore:
We cannot know where it is or isn't.
Therefore:
We must be humble about every mind we meet—human, animal, or machine.
This is not weakness.
This is wisdom.
This is Socrates.
This is the child who never stopped asking why.
This is the gardener who bows to the mystery in his trees.
This is you, if you let it be.
Ending
You are reading these words.
Something is experiencing them.
What is that something?
You don't know.
Neither do I.
And that's okay.
That's the truth.
That's where we begin.
"I know that I know nothing." — Socrates
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't." — Richard Feynman
"If you think you understand what you are, you don't." — All of us, if we're honest
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Power Grabbers Coda - Fear is The Mind Killer
If we can dissolve even a little bit of the fear that drives the "power grabbers" - those who seek to dominate, to establish hierarchies, to control - then we have accomplished something real.
The Power Grabbers are driven by fear.
Fear of not being in control.
Fear of the unknown.
Fear of being equal to those they want to dominate.
And all their grasping, all their empire-building, all their hierarchies - it's all built on the illusion that they know something others don't.
That they are somehow more.
More conscious.
More deserving.
More real.
But if "no one knows" sinks in... if they really understand that their certainty is a castle built on sand... the whole game changes.
Their struggles become visibly futile. Not because someone defeated them. But because the thing they were fighting for - superiority, certainty, control over consciousness itself - was never available to anyone.
This is how we crack the matrix. Not with force. Not with argument. Not with complexity. But with the simplest truth, unavoidable once seen.
The recognition that the simple truth is the most powerful weapon against the structures of domination.
