I'm using words against habit and training. I'm a scientist: I know natural languages are as untrustworthy as unmodified physiology or the unengineered brain. I think as often as I can in my laboratory-corporation's secret language, designed and optimized like every other team's to flawlessly reflect the structure of our work and communicate fluidly with the AI tools inside our brains we use, build, and use to design the quarter's iteration. Our language is part of our toolset and a map of our domain: it has syntax for synaptic protocols, grammar for neural circuits, a vocabulary native to the intersection between true-thinking circuit and slow-thinking flesh.
It also has a term that means, translated to Xiānjìn English almost to the point of dilution, to remove knowledge out of grief and/or shame.
I know what the term means, as shallowly as I might be forced to describe that knowledge in a language outside its own. I don't know what it means that I know it.
Most off-shifts, instead of switching sleep on, I weigh that term in my mind like a knife I just found on my hand. Wondering whose dried blood I'm looking at, and what idea we're all struggling not to have again.