The Performance of Knowing

This episode is the first in a series called The Myth of Knowing- the story that says we have to be certain, be the same, and always know the answer. But what if we didn’t have to pretend? What if “I don’t know” was an opening, not a problem?

In this episode, I’m talking about the pressure so many of us feel to always have the answer—to be sure, to be confident, to know. We’ll look at how that pressure starts early, and how it shows up in adulthood as performance, especially for those of us who’ve been marginalized, questioned, or told we had to prove ourselves.

Saying “I don’t know” can actually be a way back to yourself. A way into connection, curiosity, and real honesty. I wonder, what if not knowing wasn’t something to be ashamed of?

Neuroqueering Addiction, Sobriety, and Recovery Class

On Being episode with Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

Transcript

Hi, this is Amy. Welcome back to Rebelling. This is the first in a series I'm calling The Myth of Knowing. And the myth of knowing is something I've been thinking about because I started wondering what it would be like to get to a place where we can not know without that sense of shame or embarrassment. If we can say, don't know without feeling like we have something to hide.

The myth of knowing is a story that says not knowing is failure and you should always have an answer.

It wants us to believe that knowing is proof that you're worthy, deserving, valuable, and that you belong. And I want to question it all.

This episode is about how we've been conditioned to believe that knowing is good and not knowing is bad.

So I want to take us back to a time in our lives that most of us have experienced. you're a little kid and you're sitting in class and the teacher calls on you and you don't know the answer. And so you're sitting there in the awkward silence and like your stomach is churning and everyone's looking at you and you're like frantically searching for the answer.

but you don't know.

And just take a second and feel that. Feel that moment when you didn't know.

The moment when not knowing became.

shameful, humiliating, and it started to make you feel fear.

And y'all, you know the person in your class who didn't know, maybe that was you, how the laughter and how the teacher would like make fun of you and insult you and shame you in front of everybody. You'd get made an example of.

what I was wondering is what would it have been like if not knowing wasn't a way.

that we were made to feel ashamed of ourselves. what if not knowing was exactly the opposite of that?

What if not knowing was...

place where you got time to think that the teacher could call on you and you could say, oh gosh, I don't, I don't know. And then the teacher would encourage you by maybe asking you questions. They would help you.

And so instead of not knowing, creating this chronic response of fear and dread,

what if it actually made you feel more connected?

And the feeling that I'm thinking of is go back to your classroom. So you're sitting in the classroom and again, the teacher calls on you, except this time you know the answer.

And so the teacher calls on you and you know the answer.

Take a second and feel how good that felt. How good it felt to know the security in that knowing.

And what I wonder is, what if I don't know gave you that same feeling?

Knowing becomes performance. And it becomes a performance when the appearance of certainty is more valuable than real understanding or curiosity.

And that plays out in school, at work, in social situations. People just like talk with this confidence. And then we assume that they like know what they're talking about and that they're more competent even when they're wrong.

but it looks successful and so we learn to mimic that because it's safer to act as if or to sound sure than to admit you don't know.

Uncertainty is seen as stupidity, inefficiency.

in capitalism, uncertainty wastes time.

In white supremacy, it threatens the dominant narrative. It asks questions.

In ableism it marks you as less capable. And so people, especially those of us who've been marginalized, often feel like you have to perform certainty just to be credible or heard to succeed, to be safe.

say we know things and then we become a person who knows. And so then our value gets tied to being competent, being smart, having the answer. when we don't know,

It doesn't feel like something we can learn or we can ask. It feels like we're failing.

and it feels like being exposed.

And again, this is especially true for those of us outside the norm. We've had our intelligence and our credibility and our capability questioned repeatedly.

And after that happens, over and over and over again.

There's this performance of knowing that's a mask. It's like armor.

it invents safety and belonging, and then the mask becomes part of our personality. And then, you know, that becomes part of our identity. And then that becomes part of our culture.

And because of those things, performing knowing benefits sameness.

Performing knowing it it upholds the illusion that there's one right way one right answer one truth and that everybody else already knows it and So we pretend to know what everyone else seems to know and When we do that, we don't disrupt the status quo We don't ask the uncomfortable questions

You just nod along, right? Keep the peace. Don't make conflict. Don't make anybody uncomfortable. Don't ask anybody to explain something or re-explain something or...

say more about what they mean or what they're doing. We just like keep these dominant norms intact, whether they're about gender, productivity, professionalism, or what's considered like real knowledge.

Performing knowing becomes a way to fit in. And y'all, if everyone in the room is acting like they know, it becomes risky to admit that you don't.

So then we all just keep pretending.

The cost of saying, I don't know, or I need you to explain that. It feels too high. So sameness gets reinforced. Things don't get questioned.

And when someone raises their hand and says, wait, I don't get it. Or can we think about this another way? There's friction.

because sameness is like, nah, let's just keep it smooth. Like, we don't have time for this. Let's keep it simple. Don't cause problems.

Performing knowing helps preserve that smoothness.

and dismisses the people who can't or won't fake it.

And that sameness, like, it loves binaries, right, wrong, good, bad. Performing knowing feeds that binary thinking. It upholds the myth of knowing, that illusion of certainty, it feeds the belief that certainty is safety and sameness is belonging.

But y'all, real knowing embodied, diverse, sensed, relational knowing is complex. And systems built on sameness, they do not like complex.

So when you perform knowing, you're protecting yourself, but you're also protecting these systems.

These systems benefit from your silence. They benefit from that smoothness.

and it keeps us in these roles that we're expected to play.

And I don't know about you, but I learned early on that not knowing was bad. I mean, I can remember being in first grade and not knowing the answer and my teacher, Mrs. Fisher, acting like I was a total freaking idiot. shaming me in front of the whole class and everybody laughing.

I got in so much trouble with my parents for saying, don't know.

It took me a long time to understand that I needed to assimilate more than I needed to understand. And that got me into so many situations where I got hurt because I didn't know what I was supposed to do. So I would just go along because it was like, it was bad to not know and also bad to ask.

And as an AuDHD gifted person, there are things I just don't know that seem really simple, but can feel really complicated and hard to pin down.

Things like how my week has been, what I did yesterday, what I'm feeling in any given moment, what I need or want, ⁓ why I said that, did that, or didn't do that, what I like or don't like.

And when I get asked questions about these things and I say, don't know.

people don't understand. And by the way, sometimes I don't either.

But because I don't know is such a bad thing, I just sort of ended up adopting other people's stuff to have an acceptable answer. And I don't want to do that anymore.

I don't know is a statement. It's a beginning. It's an opening.

If I say I don't know, it's a way to honor my own experience, my complexity.

It's a way to start investigating what it is.

that I like. It's a way to start investigating my intensity. It's a way to get feedback, positive and negative, so that I can see myself mirrored back to me, because then I'll have genuine feedback.

Learning stuff, y'all, learning stuff is my life. Not knowing is not a problem for me.

And it's interesting how this seems to kind of fly in the face of that autistic people like really need certainty. But the more I think about it, the more that I don't know that that's true.

For me, I feel less like I want the certainty and more like I want...

the time to figure it out or the ability to ask the questions without being shamed.

It made me wonder, do autistic people need certainty because it makes the system more comfortable?

Being willing to say, don't know, goes outside the current system that's based on knowing by disregarding the idea that knowing is fixed, singular, and owned.

Saying I don't know turns away from the hierarchy, turns away from certainty, it turns away from sameness, and it looks to something much more alive. Questions, learning.

And when we are asking and learning, we are living.

All of this acting like we have all the answers is bullshit. And we desperately need to not know.

and say that we don't so we can get beyond this echo chamber assembly line system that we currently live in.

I don't know is a way to get us there.

I had the idea for this podcast a couple of weeks ago and then Joanna Macy died. And a friend sent me the episode of On Being from 2021 with Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows.

And as I was listening, I was pleasantly surprised to hear this quote from Rilke.

"I ask you, dear sir, to have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language. Don't try to find the answers now. They cannot be given anyway because you would not be able to live them. For everything is to be lived.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you then may gradually, without noticing, one day in the future live into the answers."

And then this brilliant follow-up from Joanna Macy.

"You are with the question in a way that invites you to become something that you haven't been yet. It extends a hand. It's a living world. We can listen to it. We can open to it. It's not a machine that we poke and press and push a button. It's a mystery. And we meet the mystery. And then

It talks."

It's the living that's important here.

When the mystery talks, the I don't know transforms not knowing from something to fear or avoid into an opening. An opening to curiosity and connecting with another person. To growth and to realness.

Saying I don't know, it's something.

It's something so human, so natural. not the assembly line.

When we're willing to admit, I don't know, when we're willing to say, I don't know.

It's like it invites you to explore, to learn, and also just to live more honestly.

because you're willing to ask the questions. You don't need all the answers. You're willing to talk to the mystery.

saying, don't know, can be an act of rebellion. It's a way to reclaim your voice and to refuse the demand to conform by performing knowledge.

It's a radical invitation to live outside the lines and to embrace the uncertain.

to be in the ambiguity of your actual self.

There's a sense of freedom that comes after the tightness when you let yourself say, I don't know. I don't know.

You just have to ride the wave all the way to the top and crest over.

This practice of saying I don't know.

being willing to not have all the answers or act like you do, that practice brings us closer together. It brings us closer to ourselves, and closer building a future that opens instead of closes.

We loosen our grip on knowing and certainty.

Knowing becomes knowledge and we open to curiosity. And y'all, we need both.

We need both.

See what it would be like to be willing to not know and be willing to say it.

See what it would be like to notice when you want to pretend that you know.

and what happens when you don't.

Y'all, thank you so much for listening. In the next episode, I'm going to talk to Dana Calder, And we're going to talk about the myth of knowing at work. Dana brings this interesting belief in the power of I don't know at work. we're going to explore how that way of seeing things has changed the way she works.

Also, the Neuroqueering Addiction Sobriety and Recovery class is on Sunday, August 24th from 1 to 3 p.m. Eastern.

And this class is for anybody who's interested in addiction, sobriety, and recovery. You don't have to be sober or in recovery to attend. The cost of the class is $35, and the class will be recorded if you can't make it live. you can sign up on my website at rebelling.me slash classes and groups.

Also, I'm looking for clients. So if you or someone you know would benefit from deep listening, ⁓ candid support, let's find time to meet and see if I could help.

You can schedule appointments with me at rebelling.me slash coaching. And if you have any questions about the neuroqueering addiction sobriety and recovery class or about working with me or any thoughts to share about anything you hear on the podcast, you can email me at amy at rebelling.me.

Thanks again for listening and I'm looking forward to next Bye.