Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

The Riddler and his bountifully bosomed cohort circa the 1960’s Batman TV series might have have something quite “puzzling” to say about this brain teaser! All rights granted to the copyright holder of this image

The Unknown

“As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.”

–Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

While an educated reader might take this to be a bit of existentialist poetry from Kirkegaard, Camus, Socrates or Confucius, this quote is apparently from former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld concerning the nature of U.S. Intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA) to acquire knowledge about imminent threats to the nation. The uniqueness of this quotation, however, is in the fact that its general nature is highly abstract and esoteric yet, at the same time, poetic and zen-like. In other words, on one hand, the person hearing or reading this statement might not grasp its meaning at all until the second reading. but once processed, it becomes clear.

Just for a little fun write down what you think this statement means in the comment box. Do you agree with the above assessment, or do you see something very different? Three, two, one… GO!

Wax well!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS