Have taken a long break from blogging because of a month long trip to Africa. After the trip I wrote a 20 page take on our experiences and received a great deal of feedback on the stories I shared with friends. My favorite comment was, “you gained a lot of knowledge.” This prompted some musings on the nature of knowledge.
I quickly recalled the caveat given by Alexander Pope: “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” As I thought about the nature of that statement it occurred to me that a whole lot of knowledge could be more dangerous than anything. Traditionally, we parse knowledge by type and so we talk about emotional, mechanical, technical, social intelligence in what becomes a weird taxonomic exercise. I decided that what makes knowledge dangerous is when it is used without principle or character. Many examples came to mind regarding famous persons who used the tools of knowledge without benefit of a reliable moral compass.
I thought about Joseph Goebbels, the father of mass influence messaging who dedicated his particular genius to the most execrable movement of modern times and Da Vinci who rounded out his studies of anatomy and art with the creation of futuristic weapons. Knowledge is indeed dangerous.
As we live through the chaos of the present it is clear that knowledge without principle rules the day. We are worried that our children are no longer capable of what we call, “critical thinking”…the ability to bring a skeptic energy to issues and exercise a tempered logic while we draw conclusions. I think this point is largely true but what worries me more is the fact that we have become incapable of empathy. Our inability to empathize is in proportion to our rage for certainty and our need for safety from that which is” other”. We have lost the suppleness of mind that allows us to truly consider the state of other people. We are tone deaf.
If you believe that we are evolving toward ever better states for mankind, empathy must be a driver. What seems to stop us is our own self-centeredness. No less a Philosopher than Plato himself considered the hierarchy of knowledge and concluded, “the highest form of knowledge is empathy for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.”
There’s the rub.
A friend of mine shared a bumper sticker with me that says it all: EGO EATS BRAINS. Our smugness and privilege often makes empathy impossible.
If we want to reclaim the best form of knowledge we better have the principle of willingness in full operation. Willing to listen, willing to put our egos on hold. Thinking is indeed critical.
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Olio Folio 