Saturday 19 March 2016

Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On


One thing about life (mine and everybody else’s) I know for sure is that I do not know and I will continue not to know. What I mean is that my knowledge will always be finite and limited. There will always be more things I will not know about than things I will.

This is what Bryan Magee, historian of philosophy and subject of a recent article in The New Statesman by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, calls “permanent exclusion from the understanding of total reality”. For Magee, accepting this status is the first step towards wisdom. I agree. To me, wisdom is not the mere pursuit, acquisition and retention of knowledge but also the landing that permits access from one set of stairs to the next.

I have been thinking about knowledge and its close cousin, belief, recently. The former has always felt like a process, an incomplete, messy, chaotic process. The more you know, the more you realise you do not know. Knowledge can be equally frustrating. You have understood the content, you have analysed the form and still… there is a missing piece in the puzzle.

Enter belief, not only of a religious nature, but of any type. Belief points at confidence in a certain type of truth that is not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof.

Whereas knowledge, both the acquisition and application of it, is chiefly empirical, belief needn’t be. If someone in the Middle Ages had written about a flat surface on which people swiped their fingers and hands to turn virtual pages in order to access information, I doubt people at the time would have come up with words such as: e-reader, smartphone or tablet. Yet, centuries later it is for us to make that connection. If we do that, are we not, however, marrying a contemporary concept to a loose and up-for-interpretation ancient one? From this point of view, this “marriage” is speculative as we do not know what people in the Middle Ages would have called these devices if they had had the chance.

I see knowledge like a river: running, shrinking, expanding, going up or coming down, never ecstatic. Belief, on the other hand, carries with it a level of persuasion, especially on the part of the believer.  Knowledge is risk because it never leaves us on terra firma. On the contrary, the acceptance of a proposition (let’s call it concept or theory) propels us further forward in search of the next challenge. Of course, certain arguments have been closed through the acquisitions of knowledge: the Earth is round and not flat, the moon rotates around the Earth and our planet circles the sun. But there still is a great deal of theories that challenges us.

This is where belief comes in. It offers succour amidst so much head-scratching. If climbing up the stairs of knowledge is satisfying, resting on the landings between floors is heavenly. Careful, though, a short break is advisable, but prolonging one’s respite might make us too “comfortable”, dull our senses and kill our thirst for knowledge. Which, lest we forget, is finite and limited.



As usual, I will take a month off during Easter and shall be back mid-to-late April. Wish you all the best.

© 2016

32 comments:

  1. This post reminds me of words spoken by Hamlet, where he tells his friend Horatio: "There's a universe in what you don't know." It's the ultimate put down, but also true of all of us.

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  2. Very true, so much we never will know and there is so much we believe we know that we don't.

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  3. Learning is a gift. For which I am very grateful. Enjoy your break.

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  4. If asked what I believe in I would say learning to understand.

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  5. A wonderfully thoughtful post, Cubano. Belief, of course, is wonderful and strengthening, but when it turns into prejudice--well--we are seeing it in the states--many don't care for knowledge! Have a good break. k.

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  6. Thanks for your comments. The clip belongs to my latest musical crush, The Gloaming. One of their songs was part of the usual CD compilation that arrives on my doorstep every couple of months courtesy of my subscription to Songlines magazine. The minute I heard this song I knew I had to get the album. I ended up buying their debut album, too, which is melody-perfect. Strongly recommend them.

    Greetings from London.

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  7. Lo que nos sorprende el mundo con sus adelantos, tan solo creer en ellos y esperar los nuevos, que todavía nos queda mucho para ver.
    Un feliz fin de semana.

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  8. "The drop in the ocean, everybody knows.
    The ocean in the drop, a rare one does."
    Kabir

    "“permanent exclusion from the understanding of total reality”. For Magee, accepting this status is the first step towards wisdom. I agree. To me, wisdom is not the mere pursuit, acquisition and retention of knowledge but also the landing that permits access from one set of stairs to the next." I love that thought.

    So happy I've found you. I hope for a good time for you on your vacation.

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  9. Thank you for the beautiful song in the video. I had not heard it and it is lovely. Have a blessed Easter. Enjoy the unfurling of spring. See you when you get back.

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  10. Loved your discussion of knowledge and belief! So often we confuse them, don't we? Always enjoy what you share.

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  11. Very well written! I often find though that people mix up belief and knowledge...

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  12. From knowledge and belief come opinions and codes of conduct. All these things are branches on our "individual trees." The actual determinants of who and what we are are rooted in genetic codes which, for the present, are strictly formulated by accident of birth. In other words, we do not actually have the "free thought" we think we do.

    We were all born too early in one sense .... in a few hundred years, maybe fewer, our descendants probably will be genetically coded to think and to act the same.

    CiL, it sounds like with the approach of Easter you might be re-examining your position regarding religion. Be careful about that .... and, my suggestion is to use your holiday to forget the world for a while .... later, man ....

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  13. problem is you can´t even trust knowledge. The brain mixes and matches everything as it pleases. You can´t even trust your own memories. :(

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  14. I think the closest ally to knowledge is curiosity - once we accept that there is so much we cannot ever know, it is exciting to think how we might find out a bit more and a bit more and a bit more. That, for me, is far more exciting than falling back on belief. (Though I do accept that some people find belief much more comfortable to live with.)

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  15. I'm afraid my thirst for knowledge has waned and sometimes I am grateful for that.

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  16. Just to sit back and separate the various truths we hold is a start. Most people do not. They believe what they believe, and what they believe is fact, sacrosanct and immutable. How else can we explain the rise of popularity of a Donald Trump.

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  17. Excellent post. I fear that more and more people are choosing their beliefs over knowledge. Conspiracy theories abound: Obama is really a Kenyan Muslim; the Sandy Hook massacre was faked and all the victims were really actors; Genesis trumps evolution, and climate change is a hoax. Many people tailor reality to fit their beliefs and steadfastly refuse to allow facts to disrupt their worldview.

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  18. That graph really says it all...an illustration of truth. Truth is in fact, always relative :)

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  19. Yes, belief and knowledge are closely aligned for so many people. It takes awareness to separate the two an open to truth. Thanks for the post.

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  20. Excellent post on the difference between knowledge and belief. Have you read Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions? It explores this issue in science.

    Nice music too.

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  21. My husband has often said, "Just because you think something doesn't make it fact." While he most often says it as an annoying response to me saying I "thought" I did something, which, in fact, I didn't do, he's absolutely right. I have great respect for people of great faith, but my respect wavers considerably when people stubbornly hang onto preconceived beliefs, even after they've been proven wrong by indisputable facts.

    But knowledge? I've been on a lifelong quest for that. Ironically, accepting the fact that it is impossible for my finite mind to ever understand the infinity of mysteries in our existence doesn't frustrate me; it has given me peace. But the thirst to learn as much as I can will never be quenched. I hope.

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  22. Gosh...this one has well and truly set me thinking...and I have to admit...I hadn't analysed my own beliefs in this way before.
    There is a huge grey area in there, isn't there?!
    I guess the quest for awareness that we are all on, to a greater or lesser extent, is probably much more complicated than I'd ever imagined.

    Wow....been on a genuine learning curve here today, CiL!
    Many thanks for expanding my mind...:)

    Have a brilliant day! :))

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  23. Usually I think there is room for both. At present, things seem rather unbalanced. You know what I mean, I suppose.
    Have a good week!

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  24. This post makes me think...certainly food for thought.

    And learning something new too.

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  25. Yes, resting on the landings between floors is heavenly.
    Like that song, especially the effect of the violin.

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  26. Hope all is well, Cubano! k .

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  27. Hello,

    I agree with you that knowledge is a step by step process. When we climb one step another step appears. The knowledge that we possess now is the cumulative effort of our forefathers who lived from the beginning of mankind. We did not get the knowledge through our own efforts. We are standing on their shoulders and as a result we are able to look a little further.

    A man living in the middle ages could not have got a smart phone because he was not ready for it. Who knows one day we will fly in the sky like birds with artificial wings. They we may not need air planes. One day we might even build houses on the moon to live. We have scratched only the surface of knowledge.

    The yellow round in your diagram appears to be too big for me. It should have been just a dot. A man can gain only a limited amount of knowledge in a life time. When we touch one boundary of knowledge another boundary appears. Knowledge is never ending and I doubt human being will be able to reach the end of knowledge even after millions and millions of years of research.

    It is belief that keeps us going through life's ups and downs. Belief in our strength, belief in our ability, belief in our resourcefulness belief in our diplomacy and belief in a Supreme being Who will take care of us at all times.

    Thiruvalluvar, a famous Tamil poet wrote long,long ago = What we learn is only a handful while the entire universe is waiting to be discovered. When do you think that will happen?

    Best wishes



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  28. Are you all right? It's not like you to take an unannounced 3 week break from blogging, although of course you are entitled to one. I still worry that something might be wrong and I selfishly miss your presence online. I do hope happy things in the real world is the reason.

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  29. To me, wisdom is not the mere pursuit, acquisition and retention of knowledge but also the landing that permits access from one set of stairs to the next. -- such words of wisdom!

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  30. Hi,

    This is a bit off topic, but I'm going to Cuba in a few weeks and am finding it difficult to organize off the beaten track stuff to do. Could you advise on this? Would be great if we could have a chat somehow, by email or other means that you would prefer. Let me know, thanks!

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  31. Thanks for your comment, Rita. Feel free to contact me at this e-mail address.

    Greetings from London.

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