Blinding Knowledge
How we deal with what we know is the difference between humility and arrogance.
The story of our progress is one of being stronger than our adversaries.
Other animals have remained, as creation first discovered them, whilst man evolved through learning to this current sophistication.
Science has been our eyes, arms and feet, enabling us to see, probe and move forward in a universe we largely do not understand.
It provided us with the reason to believe the earth was not flat and gave us the faith to act upon it.
It provides us with the faith to swallow pills and leap out of aeroplanes.
Science largely, has provided us victory over a material world and we no longer grapple with conditions as our ancestors did.
Now, if we’ve progressed so much, why is it that all our wisdom still seems to emanate from the early ages?
Why do we delve so much into a past that we have conquered, to seek out formulas for peace of mind, joy and fulfillment?
Idiotically enough, the very thing we thought we chased and overtook, races ahead of us.
Knowledge is serving only to increase our ignorance. What we thought we’d conquered, subjugates us.
Like the tip of the iceberg phenomenon, physical blindness in man is a miniscule fraction of internal blindness.
Internally, I wonder, whether we grapple with conditions our ancestors never did.
Perhaps even as we evolve externally, we devolve internally?
We need knowledge, just as much as we need air.
We need wisdom, just as much as we need oxygen.
Knowledge puffs up. It inflates us more than hydrogen does a balloon.
If lack of knowledge presents us with a challenge, the possession of it poses a greater challenge!
The moment we think we know something we begin to know it, as we ought not to know it.
The way we need to know it is as though we think we didn’t know.
Not as though we were unsure of ourselves and suffered from a lack of confidence, but that we remained sure somebody else could still teach us… That we remained confident we didn’t know it all.
Wisdom is the conquering of knowledge so that we now know, as we ought to know.
Knowledge without wisdom enhances misery.
The reality of our success lies in our ability to conquer knowing.
Next time somebody tells you something, try not saying “I know.”
Try learning again from the most obvious, mundane, fact, that ‘nincompoop’ next to you just stated.
The adversary is within. Science is blind to that.