At the fairs

and dealing with not-knowing.

Hello friends,

In this issue: Some crass commercialism to start; the Loire natural wine salons; what it means to “deal” with not-knowing; and writing about slowing down and going off-trail.

Crass commercialism

1. Happiness and not-knowing: The second InterIntellect discussion about not-knowing is next Thursday, 16 February, from 2000h-2200h CET (session details and tickets). We’ll talk about how different ways of thinking about not-knowing can either impede or aid us in our pursuit of happiness. The pre-reading is a pair of short essays about the connections between not-knowing and happiness. Part 1 is about how we are socially conditioned to think about not-knowing in ways that make us unhappy. Part 2 is about how thinking differently about not-knowing makes us more curious, more free to act, more effective in our actions, and more content.

2. A game for learning to love not-knowing: We aren’t good at dealing with not-knowing because we avoid it. We avoid not-knowing because it is uncomfortable. And we instinctively try to reduce discomfort. So I made a tool for learning to be productively uncomfortable, as a way to get better at dealing with not-knowing. idk looks like a game and is designed to be infinitely playable. Read more here about idk and how it works.

At the fairs

I had rough plans to be in Asia in early February to deal with Stuff but the situation, as they say, changed a few weeks ago. So I’ll be in Asia a few months from now instead. But I had a non-refundable TGV ticket up to Paris last weekend. I snatched a kind of victory from the jaws of defeat by going — for the first time since 2019 — to the cluster of low-intervention wine salons in the Loire that happens annually in the first week of February.

#salonlyfe in a tufa cave complex.

The faded blue cotton jacket that once clothed the natural wine merchant or sommelier has been replaced by the deep-pile Patagonia Retro-X fleece and technical outerwear designed for the Japanese market.

My wine fair peeves were present in force: People who have not yet learned to stand sideways at a table, yappies who talk unstoppably at vignerons trying to pour for others, perfume-wearers of both genders and particularly those who over-apply, carriers of enormous backpacks and totes, and those who spit inaccurately and/or too slowly.

Still, it was nice to taste a broad section through big part of the world of low-intervention winemaking. And of course to see the usual suspects from all over that world. I’m sure it is a relief for all concerned to be able to say hello with unfeigned pleasure, catch up for a few minutes, then vanish quickly into the crowds again.

“Dealing” with not-knowing

Getting to the fairs this time was the result of dealing with not-knowing — in the sense of responding to it instead of denying or trying to eliminate it.

During the first discussion session, I realised that the word “dealing” comes weighted down with baggage from our overreliance on a risk mindset. In the session summary note, I wrote that “Some people seem to interpret ‘dealing’ with not-knowing as ‘getting rid’ of it or ‘suppressing’ it. Is this a hangover from how we’re conditioned to think about dealing with risk — which is inevitably by managing it away in expectation with insurance, hedging, and other stuff like that? My own view is you can’t get rid of not-knowing. Even risk, which is a type of not-knowing, can’t actually be eliminated. It can only be dealt with in expectation and anticipated consequence.”

For me, it makes as little sense to be supine in the context of not-knowing as it does to try vigorously to eliminate it. In my view, dealing with not-knowing is inherently active, but the actions are learning how to recognise the different forms of not-knowing, understanding how to live with not-knowing, and practicing using not-knowing to learn and do new things.

Dealing with not-knowing feels close in spirit to how Certeau describes tactic (in contrast to strategy): “[tactic] is always on the watch for opportunities that must be seized ‘on the wing’ … the intellectual synthesis of these given elements takes the form, however, not of a discourse, but of the decision itself, the act and manner in which the opportunity is ‘seized.’” (Read more about his distinction between strategy and tactic.)

Instead of coming up with a new verb, maybe it’s enough to be more vigorous about reclaiming “dealing” from the risk mindset.

Writing recent and not-so

1. Slowing down. After several years of being discovered by some demographic or other, Marseille has finally become so on-trend that nearly f2f meeting I had last week before I went north was with someone who had already moved, or was thinking of moving, here. The city is going through a period of hypertrophic growth, which is already eating away at the many good reasons why that growth is happening. I wrote some reflections that apply beyond urban development about the importance of slowing things down, especially in the presence of hype-driven growth.

2. The backcountry. Several times at the salons I was asked what I do. Conventional or well-understood career paths are more legible and easier to explain. Choosing an unconventional path is a bit like going off-trail and into the backcountry. You have to learn how to do something new, and that’s hard. But what’s probably harder is learning how to tell the story of what that new thing is and why it makes sense — both to others and to yourself.

See you in a fortnight,

VT