Blindness before our very eyes

You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice. -Richard Powers in The Overstory, p. 439

I will never look at trees in the same way again. I could not see what I did not understand. And, what I thought I understood, I failed to notice. This book opened my eyes to the miracle of all forms of trees, and the darkness of our humanity which has sought, now seeks, and will seek to destroy all vegetation in the interest of our own comfort.

Yet, this principle applies to all that we do not know, which is pretty much everything. We understand little of the world, or even ourselves. And, yet, we ignorantly and arrogantly proclaim how much we know even in those places we fail to notice because they are so familiar to us.

What do you think you understand, yet fail to notice?

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