Magic, Allure, Mysticism, Science, "Ruining it", Knowledge, Improvement, Progress, Measurement, Objectives.
The first page of Durham’s Goth: Undead Subculture reads as a tragedy. It is an autobiographical recounting of Durham’s original fascination with the community in vivid emotion, presence, and immediacy—bleeding into a dry analytical viewing, cognizant of what she has lost.
Many things are built on the unknown: the outcast or the margins of what is permissible or possible. For some, that status is inherent to its very existence. Possible examples include magic card tricks, goth, kink, adventure, learning, competitive sports, social change, sanity, and the semiconductor industry.
This wider world of unknowns, walls, and obstacles shares some resemblance to the world of semipermeable membranes within a wall of human skin. While each atom and each molecule seeks a state of lower energy and order, the body as a whole does not, nor does each individual cell. Through a miraculous feat of nature this collective of nano-scale agents attempting to pass through and break down walls pursues objectives more nuanced than, and far removed from the goal to become a structureless and well mixed puddle of goo. Indeed the goals of a human or humankind may at times rest outside the scope of human understanding.
My atoms seek goo each instant, but reaching a state of goo is not my goal in life. I may seek to expand my understanding of the world at each and every turn but this does not make knowledge my only goal in life. And so we must ask further.
The widely exalted pursuit of knowledge seeks to extend the frontiers of the known, and encroach further into the infinite frontier of the unknown. Whether we refer to the knowledge of an individual, a community, or the human race as a whole, we must ask
At What Cost?
In this case, the cost under study is the loss of unknown. I can’t give a blanket answer for all things which can be known, but do caution against the blanket assumption that knowledge comes free of charge. I cite the tragedy apparent in Durham’s Goth: Undead Subculture and add this question to an infinite list we may turn to.
