Of late there
has been lot of debates about lack of understanding and more knowledge in the
social media.
It is good and
incidentally several years back Aldous Huxley wrote a wonderful but long essay
on this topic ‘Knowledge and Understanding’ and surprisingly one may find
a pdf of half the essay in Sri
Ramankrishna Mission site.
Coming back to
the subject.
It has become
normal to confuse information for knowledge;
Knowledge for
experience and thought;
Ideas
formulated based on these for wisdom;
The problem is
as these may inadvertently lead to an arrogance which may create unassailable
prejudice, petrified presumption and start projecting what we know or think we
know or presume as some great piece of tool to decipher the puzzle of life as
panacea.
The most
important facts of humility are that our perception or understanding based on
whatever may be the source of knowledge
is defective or at least not totally prefect and therefore there is nothing
that can be construed as a panacea in this world.
Education is the
enlightened awareness and acceptance of facts of inevitable evolution of
everything and experiencing life as a flow of all or some them as they emerge
through the churning process of life where they express the multiple dimensions
of everything and the various dynamics of each dimension emanating from
inherent attributes as well as a reaction to external impacts.
Life is an unmapped atlas where we are not even sure whether
all pieces of the jigsaw puzzles are there to create a shape.
Lot depends on proceeding on unbiased observations beyond or
besides or if necessary even without existing loads of knowledge because the existing
bunch of knowledge could also act as a conditioning factor if we are not alert
and totally divert our understanding of anyone or anything.
Besides all these there are also factors like our attitudes
towards multiple interpretations, ideological identity based inhibitions to
accept certain things, attitudes and overall perspective towards what we
encounter etc.
That is why it becomes a necessity to not to take on extreme
positions in anything and instead maintain a balanced view.
Extreme positions can blur the view from seeing the multiple
possibilities that may exist everywhere.
Phenella writes
in “The Unwritten Comedy”.
“To be ignorant of many things is expected
To know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom.
To know a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of learning.
To know the details of that category of things of which you are ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.”
“To be ignorant of many things is expected
To know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom.
To know a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of learning.
To know the details of that category of things of which you are ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.”
“Everything changes as you move through three stages of
awareness:
first, that beliefs are the result of conditions;
second, that beliefs are the cause of conditions;
and third, that beliefs are themselves conditions.”
― Eric Micha'el Leventhal
first, that beliefs are the result of conditions;
second, that beliefs are the cause of conditions;
and third, that beliefs are themselves conditions.”
― Eric Micha'el Leventhal
“All of us have our own inner fears, beliefs, opinions.
These inner assumptions rule and govern our lives. A suggestion has no power in
and of itself. Its power arises from the fact that you accept it mentally.”
― Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
― Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
We, most of us, swing as a pendulum between excuses and
justifications with a keenness to convince others and end up coming with
answers like these: - A tourist
guide who, when once, a lady asked him “How a row of fine rock formation were
piled up”, said “they have been piled up here by the glaciers”. When she
anxiously asked him “Where are the glaciers?” he replied “Madam, they have gone
back to get some more rocks”. Such replies are often the result of ignorance,
half-knowledge or impatience or all of these.
The
problem with human beings unlike other species is that we are consciously aware
and we can also collect, store and retrieve data and reuse them. This faculty
along with our intellectual thinking and reasoning powers hamper us from having
humility to accept the mere fact that there are many unknown as well as
unknowable elements to life as a whole and even in our individual lives.
We
either act or react according to what we want, what we can and what we are
destined to. At different times either one of these three predominates i.e.
what we want, we can we are destined to do.
