We're in a situation where nothing has been verified or there's really little, very little

information that was put forward.

I think personally that very important for me as a teacher to not know. It might sound like well

that should be obvious but it's actually not when as soon as the same day that the

charges were made public I went on to various social media sites and there were already a predominance of extremist takes.

Some people were essentially he must be guilty and then there were others who said this is some kind of witch hunt and I think both of those views are needless right now. A much smarter view is to in no way condemn without any information either parties at all. and just to try to withhold any judgment.

So tonight's talk is about then being with not knowing, being with events in our lives where not just with rumors

about people that we know, it's more about just the events that where we hear something

something is going on even something in relationship to ourselves and we don't know.

And how can we be with that unresolved experience,

which goes very, very, very deeply against human nature to be willing to not know.

From a very primal level, and I'll go through some of the different reasons why it's so difficult to just allow oneself to acknowledge that we don't have enough information, that we can't form an opinion or view. The first thing is that all of

human speech and socializing has been proposed by evolutionary psychologists such as Robin Dunbar and others is

grounded on gossip. Gossip was the first form of human speech.

We, our species developed and hunter-gatherer clans

where you'd spend your entire life in a small cell of about six other adults and a few other children.

And then you would occasionally get together a few times a year with a plant, which would be maybe comprised of all distant relatives

that were comprised in different cells or different groups.

And the most important thing for human beings at that point was to keep track of which individuals were generous and safe and which individuals were not

safe, in which individuals were not generous, are not safe.

In other words, there were very, very scant supplies of food, of shelter, of clothing, of

food, of shelter, of clothing, of warmth.

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