Knowledge

Knowledge has, for most of history, been a privilege possessed by a lucky few. A thing of learned men. And because of this has always been held in high regard. Bertrand Russell wrote of the three passions that governed his life, the third being “the search for knowledge”. A search shared by most of humanity, for the secrets that lay in the stars, the oceans, the animals, the books, the paintings, and most of all inside their own heads. As the saying goes: “knowledge is power”. But it wouldn’t be too hard to argue that knowledge no longer commands such power. The internet, more than anything else, has made knowledge accessible to anyone, at least anyone lucky enough to be part of the internet-accessing world, in the click of a few buttons. Detailed histories, statistics, lab results, all great works of literature and science - all open to everyone. Education rates, despite still needing drastic improvements, are higher than ever before. And it is not only the way we access knowledge but the knowledge itself that has evolved: think of the turn of the 20th century, the work of Einstein, Freud, Darwin and many others, that arrived and shaped our understanding of the world, and of ourselves, in a drastically short period of time. I doubt most people realise how recent most of the knowledge we take for granted is. Knowledge exists in the background for most, an infinite collective that we are all happy to resign to others. Although surely that is the danger: that the accessibility of knowledge has made us all viewers, stationary observers, and not the explorers and adventures that we all used (at least aspired) to be.  

Here’s a darker view of knowledge, easily debatable but food for thought nonetheless. I recently saw an interview of American linguist and intellectual Noam Chomsky filed at his university office. The room was a hurricane mess of books and papers. A visualisation of an intelligent mind overflowing. Chomsky sat and talked as a man who had dedicated his life to the search (and practical use) of knowledge. A life spent reading, researching, questioning, writing, thinking. My first thought, somewhat strangely, was that all these books and papers, these walls of theory and history, were a defense against fear. A defense against the existential questions that have no definite answer, that can’t be read about, measured and given a conclusion in a textbook. A belief that knowledge will eventually save you. And I felt bad that this man had went to these extremes, scoured the world this far, in search of knowledge, when it is obvious to anyone that they won’t save him from death, won’t keep him warm at night, and no matter how many platitudes they could (and have) win him, they will, in the end, leave him well and truly alone. Maybe this is a reaction only someone young, who has grown up with the internet, would have. You could call it cynical or snobbish, and I don’t believe these things; knowledge is a great thing, and a search for understanding can be a fulfilling and useful endeavor. But it should be undertaken knowing that the answers will forever lead to more questions.