Last week I had an insightful (one of many…many many) dialogue with artist and fellow art practitioner, Steve Marshall. The word knowledge was repeated and explored few times in our chat. It remained in my head and this morning, I woke up wanting to write some words and reflections on it.
A question keeps returning to me over and over again “how much more knowledge do we need?” As I ponder on it I can’t stop thinking about what do we do with all the knowledge we already have.
"We seem to have come to a phase in civilization marked by a voracious appetite for knowledge, in which the growth of information is exponential and, perhaps more important, its availability easier and faster than ever" prof. Firestein.
It feels to me at times we produce and consume knowledge compulsively, maybe even without understanding what we “already know”. It seems a knowledge for the sake of knowledge but not really embodied. It feels a badge to be shown. It feels knowledge without wisdom.
When I was a young PhD student, my discoveries all came from stumbling over and over again on the “failure” of what I thought I already knew. My days in the chemistry lab. were a continuous dance between the crafting of what I knew and the endless practice of inquiry and exploration of the "Why what I know is not working?" I have to thank my ignorance for all I have learnt and discovered.
It is ignorance―not knowledge―that is the true engine of science. Stuart Firestein
As the saying goes, knowledge speaks but wisdom listens. Maybe, it is that ignorance that listens with attention and care that over time becomes wisdom. All qualities that the fast technologies we have created put at risk because “a huge silence might interrupt the sadness of never understanding ourselves.” Neruda
Wisdom implies more than being able to process information in a logical way. Wisdom requires education but, education does not necessarily make people wise. It is the ability to understand not just on a cognitive level, but also from an emotional and spiritual level and through a lived experience that makes us wise.
For us to progress as humankind we need them both: Knowledge and Wisdom.
What is that you know? And how are you practicing what you already know?
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