K(no)wledge
I'm obsessed with people. Not a particular person, just people in general. I love finding out the way we work and what we do and why we do it. But we live in a world where knowing too little isn't good, and knowing too much will completely fuck you up. It's quite the Faustian complex. So what do we do? Marlowe is rolling over in his grave laughing hysterically at this question, as if you're familiar with the play Faustus, he didn't have the answer either. And by the way I just stared at this blinking cursor for 10 minutes, I don't have anything to offer as a suggestion. I don't know how to balance knowledge. Yeah, "knowledge is power" and all that other bullshit NBC's public service announcements feed us, but knowledge is scary. If you know too little, you'll either be naively happy (and everyone will bitterly despise you) or, you will just not know enough, plain and simple. But what is too little, or too much, and really, what is enough?
posted by Andrea @ 9:06 PM
1 Comments:
My feeling has always been that, with knowledge, you at least have the potential to grow as a person from that knowledge (channeling Dr. Phil here). For example (note: this will probably be a bad example), I wish that the Holocaust had never happened, obviously. Watching movies and hearing first-hand accounts of what happened is disturbing, and more often than not it completely ruins my day. But I would rather know about it, and learn from it, and make sure that ignorance and hatred on that level never happens again; than to be happily, peacefully unaware of it.
As to what is enough, or what is too little, I don't think there is a right answer to that (surprise!). I have adopted the idea that you will figure things out in life eventually. These realizations will come at different times for different people, and in different ways. For people like you (and me), I know we wish we weren't faced with these things right now, but I am positive that at some point, everyone will be facing these issues. We, however, have a "head start," and may be able to make better sense of things later in life. I can only hope.
Sorry for adding a blog onto your blog :)
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