Recently I've been spending quite a bit of time (~)meditating and simultaneously I've had many instances where I've felt that I've come to understand a new concept. Something I've found curious about part of this process is that there is a class of significant realizations that are also memetically anti-viral: I realize a thing, and I also notice that I don't want to talk about the thing. The realization may feel important, but trying to talk about and share it with others feels so totally, incredibly worthless.
I feel like I finally understand the trope of the cryptic Zen master: The obscurity is intentional! And frankly also— unfortunately, wonderfully— this aesthetic seems like the best solution to the problem they face: The receiver is harmed when too many details are shared.1
A trouble with concepts in this class is that they're felt more than they're thought; they're not quite accessible with mere words. If you imagine that every word is a vector in thoughtspace, then a sentence of words in aggregate can point in the direction of an idea. However, there exist as-yet-unknown ideas that you can't point to with almost any combination of your current vocabulary. Your current vectors don't span all of thoughtspace. But there are other ways of thinking that aren't just wordmoosh (and these ways are more real, too). And so if there is a particular abstract concept like this that you want to share with someone else, then there's not much to say about it, so instead you just give a hazy clue and then say no more.
Surely more words can't hurt? But they can: the receiver may, intentionally or not, attempt to game the words, or try to paint too much of the picture using only what was shared. The receiver may even notice a verbal pattern and fool the giver into thinking that they understand when they don't. I know, because I'm particularly good at this— and this has held me back. Hearing too much about any particular concept like this easily limits the scope of my thinking in a way that I don't know how to prevent. So nowadays I respect the haziness of the clues I'm given, and I ask for additional guidance a lot less often.
Anyways, because of this all I've been a lot more enigmatic lately. I wish to become skilled enough in these domains that I could just directly explain the concepts that I want to share, but I acknowledge that it might just not be possible for some class of significant ideas. And so, for now at least, I too will concede to obscurity.
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