"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau was talking about unfulfilled potentials, at best; participating in a rat-race you did not sign up for, at worst.
Quiet desperation is like an engine design that's done wrong. It works but it's unnecessarily sluggish.
There exist a class of desperation so quiet that you don't know you know it's there.
Here's a recap of The Rumsfeld Matrix:
| Known | Unknown | |
|---|---|---|
| Known | Things you've learned | Things you've mastered |
| Unknown | Things you know exist but is ignorant about | Things you cannot even conceive |
Unknown-unknowns are usually the most interesting part in this matrix, but we won't talk about it here.
The focus here is on unknown-knowns. Things that belong here are one of two extremes. The good extreme are things you've habitualized, like clicking 'agree' on terms-of-services, you don't even know you're doing it anymore. Any craft practiced to mastery will be a display of unknown-knowns.
The bad extreme is a form of quiet desperation you don't know exist in your head. In the attempt of making it known, you do not have the capacity to express them.
We shall call these unthoughts.
Unthoughts cannot be found by thinking harder. Very few problems in the world are solved by thinking harder in the same direction. Finding unthoughts by thinking harder is like imagining a sound you've never heard of before.
Unthoughts got there partly from social influences, learned desires and yearnings. Seeing your friend's nice car makes you want one, for instance. It's not a desire you independently derive but cargo-culted from. Desire to be unreasonably virtuous learned this way is no less an unthought.
Unthought is like crapware you cannot uninstall, does nothing but run in the background consuming processing cycle and energy.
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