Knowing...what?

Reading, writing, understanding, connecting, remembering, framing arguments, and looking at things from different and sometimes alternative and/or connected perspectives. The way I see it, one of the purposes of education - in the ideal sense - is that it helps a human being to understand more of what he sees in the world around (and beyond) and to bring however much he can within a connected framework of comprehensibility. To know, remember, to connect, and to understand, and to experience a profound joy while engaging in such mental gymnastics. So much for education.

I realise fully well, and always have that degrees mean nought without the mental keenness that is required. Complete duds can acquire degrees. Nor have I believed that being within the framework of formal education somehow automatically confers intelligence - even of the plain academic sort - onto otherwise dull and non-probing minds. If anything being within formal academia, makes many people far more stupid, narrow minded, and more pompous than they would have been otherwise. But it may provide for them with the means of acquiring a livelihood.

In fact a decade or so ago I almost quit formal education altogether but after a couple of attempts I quit trying to quit formal education because I didn't see what abilities I could sell in order to make a livelihood.

I know that one certainly doesn't need to be within the formal academic system to know, remember, and connect. And it's not just detached knowing and objective knowing that I'm talking about. The most brilliant scientists were also humane and connected in that they were never far away from contemplating on the philosophical significance and magnificence of this universe and our place within it. But what is our place in it? Or have we all self-deluded ourselves into thinking that we have some higher, some other noble purpose than to just sit, drink, eat, and exist? I cannot and will not believe that (for one thing: it's much too bleak to think of). For what of the artists and composers, who felt and created? And what of the mystics, the saints, and the seers, the poets and the prophets? The Ones who knew? The ones who spoke about a love so profound? How did they know? And they lived and acted with what they knew. Nobody had to tell them that they were right or wrong, and some did not die peacefully for believing in what they did, and for valuing what they did. How did they know that they weren't just crackpots? There is a difference for sure between the crackpot and the saint!

And what is it that we have done with all our knowing? How is it that we still live in the state that we do? We still kill, maim, plunder, and if not that we spend our lives in a state of unthinking apathy, indifference, fear, an inability to communicate, an inability to focus, an inability to love or to make love matter....

If all the knowing proceeds along a single path one would think that at some point wisdom would emanate. Yet, and I cannot get around this, how is it that we humans seem to make the same mistakes over and over again?

I'm somewhat peeved that I don't seem to have answers to any of the really important questions - any more than I did when I was 17. At least back then I was cocky enough to believe with the fullest and most absolute conviction that I would know all there was to know, and clearly and consciously, and live with that knowledge - and act on that knowledge, and die wise and young. Ho-ho-ho.

I remember The Telegraph (or was it The Statesman?) used to run those fun pop psych. quizzes every week, from which I remember one question. It ran: If you were given a choice would you rather have fame or wisdom? I remember saying 'fame'. I'd reasoned that being famous was not something one could control but was something that one indeed could just 'have' through some accidental quirk of fate....but wisdom, I reasoned had to be gathered, had to be an experience, and had to be the fulfilling consequence of how one lived one's life. It was something that would have to be accumulated, and would have to be earned. One couldn't just 'have' wisdom or 'be given' wisdom (well one can argue that one could be blessed with wisdom). It was akin to greatness as opposed to mere fame of a popular and ephemeral sort. It was something that I would have to possess through my own abilities - however much or meagre, through my own conduct and through my own travels. Even knowing wasn't enough. Knowing but not acting out on what one knew meant that one was no wiser. Now when I look back on that response for a silly quiz I wonder whether it means that I was a smart alec or whether I really was sensible for at least feeling that wisdom wasn't something that one could just have just the way I'd felt about some other things: that old age didn't make one mature and that intelligence wasn't something that could be faked....or maybe it was a quirky incident set up for the purposes of reminding me some years down the line that one should never not truthfully say what one would very much like to have - even if it seems impossible and even if it is in response to a 'silly' pop psych. quiz question.

And so now with another 17 years added on I find myself knowing that knowing still matters, truth matters, goodness matters, courage matters, and humour matters. And when fear eclipses the senses and nothing seems to matter apart from the horror and the haunting nightmares - kindness, laughter, and love matter. These do matter otherwise, without doubt.

In the meanwhile, one earns a livelihood, gets a proper job, prays for those less fortunate, prays with earnestness for the health, happiness, joy, and peace of one's loved ones, and prays with desperation that somewhere, somehow, sometime love matters in an absolute sense.