Always Be Updating
The knowledge we have is only as good as our last application of it
The world is filled with knowledge. Unlike any other time in history, including the enlightenment period, our time, right now, is filled with the most knowledge ever able to be accessible by a single individual at any point in time.
Through technology like Google, we have free access to nearly any book we want, to an audio version of those books, or to even find the contact information of an individual we want to ask a question of.
Francis Bacon, the enlightenment philosopher, is famous for his phrase “knowledge is power,” and while the more knowledge we have, the smarter we are, knowledge is truly only as good as the application of the information to a particular scenario at a particular time.
Immanuel Kant, the great philosopher of the 1700s, put it this way:
"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."
Knowledge is power not just because we know something, or we can look something up, but because we can apply the information time and time again to the lives we live. Knowledge is knowing whether or not to use a screwdriver or a hammer. It is the understanding of something and the ability to apply that understanding to a vast array of events.
As we apply our knowledge to the world, we have to begin to update our worldview. Knowledge is not something static, it is a springboard for future knowledge. While knowledge is sometimes thought of as an isolated thing, or as having a singular purpose, it actually has the ability to applied to a variety of scenarios, many of which would not be our first choice of application. A screwdriver may have been invented to insert a screw, but its functionality can be applied to opening paint cans, putting a hole in something, mark a spot, or any other purpose someone can come up with for it.
This is because knowledge is moldable—but only if we let it be. Our lives are filled with different events each and every day. The person we were yesterday is not the same person we are today. There’s been 24 hours of events that have taken place and within that time we have experienced the world in a way we hadn’t before, simply by living. We may have learned a new skill or had a bad breakup or had to make a hard decision. All of the events of our lives are building blocks to the moment we’re currently in. But we often fall into the trap of learning something and leaving that knowledge just how we found it, never updating our worldview to fit all of the new experiences we have encountered. Life provides us with new situations each and every day and yet we live our lives with knowledge and beliefs that we haven’t updated in years, sometimes since we first learned them.
Kant stated:
"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another.”
We feel comfortable in what we know. When we learn something, that gets encoded within our brain for future use. But we then never go back and update it before our next use of that knowledge. How many times have we encountered someone or an scenario and asked why the task is being done the way it is only be hear in return, “It’s how we’ve always done it.”
This lack of growth leads us to stagnate our knowledge and lose out on opportunities to be building greater, more up to date knowledge that we can use to find success today. We don’t encounter a new situation and say wait I don’t fully know or understand this, I should investigate. Rather, we apply logic and knowledge previously known. But if that knowledge was developed 20 years ago and never updated, it may no longer be as applicable to today as we think it is. If, however, we keep a curious mind, if we have the foresight to see and remember that all experiences are meant to help update our understanding of the world, then we keep our mind open to take in new knowledge, and to update the knowledge we already have.
This is the only way to truly survive in the ever changing world we currently live in. We have to constantly be updating our knowledge and beliefs as we encounter new scenarios and information. It doesn’t mean what we encounter will lead to an update in our beliefs, but as long as we keep an open mind, it will provide us an opportunity to be open to our beliefs being adjusted, and in turn, our knowledge growing from where it was yesterday.
Thank you again for reading and I hope you found this useful. Please feel free to heart, comment, or ask questions about this post. Suggestions are always appreciated and considered.
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo