ARROGANCE OR IGNORANCE!!
“I know nothing but my ignorance.” When great classical Greek thinker
Socrates said this in around 400 BC, it was not admittance by a learned man
about his ignorance of a particular field of science or art. It was rightly
construed by contemporary followers in the context of spirituality,
psychological conflict, purpose of existence, a subject of philosophy. It
worked as a spark that led the masses to explore the infinite dimensions of
their conscious and realize its emptiness. Inherent in the statement was the
urge to realize the surroundings, understand the very existence, experience
life and thus move towards enlightenment.
After almost 2400 hundred years, like fundamental laws of Physics, the
statement holds good, even today and the only contrast being the weight that
has added to it.
Despite being in an age of scientific renaissance and having studied the
solutions of what were impossible riddles of nature a couple of centuries
ago, many of us have only recently found what CC in our automobile is all
about, and BHP is just a parameter to compare the two. We do know
whether our mobile is CDMA or GSM but have never cared to know what
these technologies are, few can expand S.I.M of sim card. Software,
programme and applications are all one to us. PEB is something in a boom.
Pancreas, like pituitary, indeed is a gland fitted somewhere in a body. Fan
motor, plastic, refrigerator, chips and processors, our legal and constitutional
rights, earphone, gdp, ppp, PayPal, inflation, stemcells, my body, this paper
and the ink in this pen. Just look around.
Is there any thing that we know every thing about, is there anyone who
knows every thing about something. The honest and smart answer to it is
“No”.
We have socially agreed to live a life in an oblivion. We know enough to
sustain the normal course of life.
But it is quite an irony that we have an opinion to make on almost every real
and hypothetical thing in this world like, CDMA is out, Format your laptop,
Narendra Modi, Chartered Accountants lie, lawyers make money, America
and China etc.
Such opinions are expressions of our arrogance that we know enough, that
we have less to learn and more to preach, and an acceptance of our
ignorance which we, on and off, disguise as our innocence. This acceptance
is not humble like that of the Socrates’; it is rather superficial for it does not
seek to expand knowledge.
In the past century world has developed a way too fast. Perhaps, the domain
of knowledge has gone beyond the capacities of human brain and the
competetion in life has resulted in the further classification of knowledge
into specifics.
The best that yet can be retained is an honest character. An honest
conception of the fact that “I don’t know” may leave the mental ground
fertile for the new seeds of knowledge to bear fruits.
If Socrates had been here in such a vibrant scientific age he might have said,
“Believe me, I really don’t know anything.”
