Thank you for the opportunity to taste test top level blogging and for a good setup topic, first the angst of being a renaissance wannabe in the age of math based engineering and data explosion.
The world and counseling needs some words for the mental states related to failures to Grok, Grok being a made up word from the science fiction novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” by R. A. Heinlein suggested to mean deep or total understanding of something. A lot of us, in technology, in science, in the arts go though one or more crisis as we find limits to how much we can mentally grasp, read, absorb and apply to our lives. These recurring pains, are less than a mental illness and sometimes hit just before a creative workaround but are still life issues…. you would think we would have special words for this!
Often the come with emotional patterns like grief; denial, anger, acceptance and sometimes one gets locked into a negative phase for long periods of time. The typed “angry artist” for example.
Guest post from excentricbahhumbug
And yet another Kindred Spirit. If “Grok” means full understanding, what about “unGrok” for That Which Is Mystery?
NIW
June 13th, 2008
from excentricbahhumbug
Potentially, although in the novel and some fan’s contexts, failure to grok, is not so much the mystical mystery as it is an expected place of ignorance and perhaps lack of grace. I more often consider “awe” as the mental state but that is off from the normal english semantics when talking about the some of the ever present unknown.
excentricbahhumbug guesting for Satchel.
Satchel
June 15th, 2008