I really like your comment that you’re a little concerned about ‘knowledge’ being ‘stored’ [ and that you’ve] been thinking lately that ‘memory’ is what’s stored and that knowledge is something that needs to be negotiated.

Negotiated knowledge strikes me as the heart of the nomad’s journey through the rhizome. We are constantly negotiating with our environment (other nomads, landscapes, landmarks, symbol systems, and memories—sounds like a MOOC) to create the knowledge we need for the moment. Our memories are the precipitate of previous negotiations, and they become part of our value-add (both high value and low value), the stuff that we bring to the negotiations. The stuff that other nomads bring to the negotiations. The stuff that plants, animals, and stones bring to the negotiations. Yes, stones have memories. Longer than ours, fortunately.

The danger, of course, is focusing on our memories and forgetting the negotiations. This defines, I think, the differences between conservatives and liberals. The arch-conservative can never forget her memories, the arch-liberal can never remember his. For the conservative, truth lies only behind—for the liberal, truth lies only ahead. For the nomad, truth lies neither behind nor ahead, but is to be negotiated, worked out for the moment as best as she can, used, and then brought to the next negotiation as a starting point, a continuation of the truth behind her, but not sacrosanct. Rather, a good, useful, reliable starting point.

Maybe it’s the fine Merlot that was in my glass, but that’s what I think just now.