That's the thing that really got me whilst writing my thesis. The paradox of knowledge is that violence both limits what can be known by sealing off consciousness and in fact provides the basis for asserting certainty by sealing off the consciousness. To put it a different way, infinity implies a lack of certainty in knowledge, in the same way as would happen if one had a limitless capacity to take in data, since this would mean one never would stop drawing in more information to get around to processing it.
On has to be limited in order to be able to think. A certain amount of limiting is beneficial in this sense, but what presses inwards from outside is the violence that facilitated your capacity for knowledge in the first place. Except in the abstract or through initiation, you can't know the nature or degree of the violence pressing you in from the outside because you wouldn't be you if you could know it -- you would have to change and not be the you whom you are now. In the process of coming to know the violence that limits knowledge you may also cease to be able to think, which means you are no longer limited by the awareness of your peculiar state of being -- your limited consciousness.
All of this is dangerous to the highest degree, but that is not the point. That knowledge is really a paradox is the point. You know whatever it is you know because something outside of you has violently curtailed your faculty of knowing. The fear of emotional abandonment is a major factor influencing our childhood state of mind as we move into adulthood. Of course, psychoanalysis suggests with a degree of joy in violence that is nothing short of alarming, that the fear of castration leads to conformity and an abandonment of limitless existence.
On has to be limited in order to be able to think. A certain amount of limiting is beneficial in this sense, but what presses inwards from outside is the violence that facilitated your capacity for knowledge in the first place. Except in the abstract or through initiation, you can't know the nature or degree of the violence pressing you in from the outside because you wouldn't be you if you could know it -- you would have to change and not be the you whom you are now. In the process of coming to know the violence that limits knowledge you may also cease to be able to think, which means you are no longer limited by the awareness of your peculiar state of being -- your limited consciousness.
All of this is dangerous to the highest degree, but that is not the point. That knowledge is really a paradox is the point. You know whatever it is you know because something outside of you has violently curtailed your faculty of knowing. The fear of emotional abandonment is a major factor influencing our childhood state of mind as we move into adulthood. Of course, psychoanalysis suggests with a degree of joy in violence that is nothing short of alarming, that the fear of castration leads to conformity and an abandonment of limitless existence.
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