This is the fourth post in a sequence that demonstrates a complete naturalist study, specifically a study of query hugging (sort of), as described in The Nuts and Bolts of Naturalism. For context on this sequence, see the intro post.

“Mud and Despair” is not officially one of the phases of naturalism. Unofficially, though, it’s the phase that often happens somewhere between “Getting Your Eyes On” and “Collection”.

When I look back at my notes from this part of my study (roughly mid September), I am somewhat bewildered. From my current perspective, it seems as though things were exactly on track. I was making excellent progress, focusing ever more closely on the precise experiences that can lead to mastery of the skills that underlie "hug the query". My study was really taking off.

And yet, I just felt so lost. I wasn't convinced I was studying anything real, anything that actually existed. I thought that perhaps I had "made it all up", and now the sham was falling apart in my hands.

And so, on September 25th, I gave up. "I should study something else right now," claims my log, "and perhaps come back to this after I've remembered how it's supposed to go."

A year previously, in “Getting Your Eyes On”, I predicted this exact experience. I wrote about it after watching others go through the very same thing, after watching myself go through this over and over again.

It’s very common, in this stage, to feel a lot of doubt and confusion about what you’re trying to study. (...)

People sometimes respond to this kind of deep confusion with despair. They don’t like feeling more lost than when they started.

But in fact, it is usually an excellent sign to feel deeply confused at this point, and here is why.

Naturalism is especially likely to be the right approach when you’re not exactly wrong about the truth value of some proposition, so much as not even wrong. It’s especially useful when you are thinking about things from the wrong direction, asking the wrong questions, using concepts that do not or cannot match the territory.

When you’re beginning from a place of not even wrong, you will likely find, in your first moments of direct observation, that you cannot make sense of what you are seeing. Why? Because the sense you are accustomed to making is not the sense that the actual world makes. When you look directly for the first time and do not understand what you see, it means that you may well be actually looking instead of just making things up.

In this phase, things that seemed obvious and straightforward before often become perplexing. The most useful responses to this are curiosity and patience. If you stick it out, if you just keep observing through the doubt and confusion, you will begin to form new concepts, and this time they’ll develop through intimate contact with the territory. Clarity may come later in the procedure, but things may have to get very muddy first.

Nevertheless, when I found myself in the middle of mud and despair this time around, I lost access to that broader perspective. I did, indeed, give up—though only briefly.