“Failings of the intelligence are incorrigible, since those who do not know, do not know themselves, and cannot therefore seek what they lack.”
~Balthasar Gracian.
It’s clear that knowledge is power. It’s said that for anyone to feel truly free in any tangible way they need two things: information—knowledge being power; and, to be trusted—for being trusted implies trust and scope to the extension of boundaries. Hence, freedom is known.
If anyone is ever to mature they must feel free. They must not be encumbered in any way with disabling fear.
No one can rise above their challenges without the flutter of hope buffeting beneath their wings. Hope is merely the Group A flagship of freedom.
There is no more empowered a state than to have a command over information—data formed into sets of quantifiable and qualifiable meaningful knowledge.
Add the application of trust, which is simply faith injected into an individual, based fundamentally in unconditional acceptance, which is love, and we have the person freed on hope. Of course, they thrive. We know it when it’s happened like this for us.
As far as information is concerned we should either focus on voraciously getting it or spend plenty of time with those who have it, so we might glean knowledge through them. Being zealously intent to grow in knowledge—and therefore, wisdom—is one form of ‘greed’ that hasn’t a shred of vice about it. It’s pure virtue on tap. It is something we can gorge on and no one will ever feel offended.
It is by far a better thing for us to think we don’t know as much as we should, rather than think we’ve got sufficient knowledge already. The former reeks humility; the latter, pride. But the sad reality is our default thinking is routinely in the latter.
We get comfortable and apathetic about life when things begin to run smoothly, but the flow that way means we’re heading for a less free reality down the track—a hell of our own making.
The challenge is to clearly up the ante. We need keep our interest and passion for knowledge piqued such that we don’t fall into this proud lull.
Come to freedom. Let’s get hungry for knowledge which then will open the door to trust—people seeing our knowledge as trustworthy as we apply the knowledge wisely. This in turn will create a less-bounded environment for us where we can enjoy more freedom.
Freedom then extends to responsibility and then to love... (the circle of growth unto maturity)... the subject of a subsequent article.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment