Waking from our symbolic dream

There is a familiar but rarely articulated sensation that accompanies much of contemporary thought. A feeling that our concepts, identities, and explanations are almost right, yet somehow off by a small but persistent margin. We recognize ourselves in the stories we tell about who we are and what the world is like, but not without friction. Something catches and resists. Our language fits well enough to function, but not well enough to settle. This sensation is often dismissed as confusion, personal uncertainty, or intellectual failure; however, it appears with too much regularity, across too many domains of life, to be reduced to individual error. It surfaces in philosophical debate, political discourse, scientific explanation, and private reflection alike. We sense that we understand, and simultaneously that we do not quite understand what we think we understand.