The “Dunno” Card: Your permission to not know

Back in my school days, I was rewarded for knowing things. And the world, as I understood it then, was knowable—even if knowing required a huge effort.

Those days are gone. Now, the world feels more like an ocean, with little islands of knowing surrounded by vast expanses of “we don’t have a clue.”

And this year?

As I hear so many asking, What can I do? or What can we do?—my honest answer might sound like a simpleton’s.

I dunno.

The Cost of Not Knowing

Back in grade school, too many I dunnos would have landed me in trouble. Grammar aside, the insolence of not knowing might have sent me to the back of the classroom, where uncooperative students were penned—perhaps in the belief that shame leads to obedience.

One of my unruly classmates had to wear a dunce cap (though don’t quote me; I might be remembering that from a cartoon). The dunce cap symbolized stupidity and unresponsiveness.

Little did those teachers—particularly those of the Victorian era, when such punishments were common—know that the dunce cap had a very different origin.

Origins of the Dunce Cap

The cap was named after the medieval scholar and philosopher John Duns Scotus (1266–1308), who believed that pointed hats could help funnel knowledge into the brain. His work was far from primitive—his contributions to philosophy and theology were complex, highly reasoned, and required great intelligence to understand.

Scotus’ followers saw the hats as a sign of wisdom, wearing them in universities where he taught, including Oxford. He also believed the pointed shape helped transmit higher knowledge from the cosmos to us mere mortals.

I could certainly use some of that wisdom today, even if it means being labeled a dunce.

Permission to Not Know

But what the hey—I hereby grant myself, and you, permission to not know. And to make it official, I’m giving myself some breathing room by listing the things I don’t need answers for, effective immediately:

• • When will the current craziness end?
• • What actions can I take to right a ship that appears to be sinking?
• • What should I cook my husband for dinner tonight?
• • Will using Ridwell for some of my recycling actually help the environment?
• • How soon will the world end?
• • What is the best brand of eraser to buy?
• • Is it possible to be friends with a MAGA-type?
• • What is my dog trying to tell me when he insists on licking my whole face?

I invite you to build your own list.

Finding Space

Taking time off from knowing, I hope, will create more space in my mind.

In a world cluttered with daily devastating news, mental space is at a premium. Yet space is key to artistic creation. Consider:

• • In music, silence is as important as notes. Claude Debussy once wrote “Music is the space between the notes.”
• • In visual art, negative space is crucial—where the open areas around an object may be as important as the object itself.
• • In poetry, John Keats wrote in 1817 about negative capability—the ability to hold uncertainty, mystery, and doubt without demanding clear resolution or rational explanation. He described it as being:

…when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…

Uncertainty is hard to sit with. We are all learning how.

So, if the weight of knowing becomes too much, feel free to use that permission slip—or watch reruns of Chad, a favorite character Pete Davidson used to play on Saturday Night Live.

Taking a Page from “Chad”

Pete recently reprised his role for SNL’s 50th anniversary show. (Wait—come to think of it, isn’t Pete actually just Chad?)

Chad is a simpleton who responds to anything with a Zen-like nonchalance. His vocabulary—Huh? OK. Nah.—works for nearly any situation. He is the ultimate I dunno kind of guy.

Chad refuses to be burdened by complexity or by what others expect of him. He doesn’t need to know—and he makes us laugh.

In a way, Chad is like a secular Holy Fool—someone who speaks their truth, regardless of what others (especially people in power) think. The Holy Fool is unafraid to say I dunno or be seen as foolish.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s a role worth trying on—at least part of the time.

Be a Holy Fool. Speak truth to power. Forget having to know all the answers.

And don’t forget to laugh.

Then, above all, stay true to the voice within.