Knowing

By mugen shiyo · Dec 29, 2011 · ·
  1. How much do you know?

    You can not know more than you have directly experienced. Most of the knowledge you have you build up regarding things you have not experienced, places you never been to, situations you've never been involved in...All that is hear say gathered from some form of media or another. It may be right or it may be wrong, but you don't know that. You knowledge is based on trust in hearsay.

    Hearsay... hear + say. They hear it and they say it. Substitute 'hear' with 'see' and 'read'. Now you know where knowing comes from. Or do you :p

    My basic point is that, especially in today's information age, a lot of people can go around thinking they know things- even negligible things they may be taking for granted. But beyond our immediate little worlds that we can experience with our own senses we do not really know anything beyond that.

    I can't say don't trust your textbook, or don't listen to the news, but be aware that in every age there are many thoughts and ideas that was right then- an provable, mind you- but wrong today, and your news is just things being said and shown to you from what most consider a credible source, but by no means infallible or incorruptible.

    It would be better if I start off by saying, 'I do not know' And if saying that enough times makes me uncomfortable, go and seek the answers for myself.

Comments

  1. story_teller
    I agree! Even what you think you know isn't even the same thing.
    In my youth I saw a car accident and one of the passengers died. I thought that because I was there and that I saw it I knew and understood. It wasn't until I was a few years later when I was in a car accident where the driver was killed I realised that the experience (regardless of physical injury) was very different. What I first saw and how it impacted me, at the time I thought it impacted me. I felt an emotional response, I felt fear in different situations that I felt were similar to what I had seen. I thought it was a learning experience, I was wrong. Learning and experience, I have discovered are very different things, I know that I still have a lot to learn and to experience.

    I do though think that and can accept that people can learn and know things even though they have not experienced it themselves.
    You might never experience childbirth but I bet even without ever giving birth you would know how to care for a child. This example I understand might be made a better argument because our survival instincts generally drive us to nurture children, even if not our own.

    However it might be hard to argue that you can experience fact. Breathing for example, you know about breathing, you experience breathing, but you don't experience the fact of breathing or visa versa, the physical and chemical action and consequences and results of breathing, the oxygen entering your blood stream via the bits that do that... (I'm no Doctor) but you don't know the facts of what you are experiencing. (Ok arguably some can) Your body knows how to breath, you experience breathing, but do you know how you are breathing is what I'm trying to say, your question I think is a great one and could really be asked both sides of the fence.
  2. LaGs
    I always try to ward off arrogance by telling myself I don't really know anything, only, as you say, what people tell you
  3. mugen shiyo
    @ story teller. Definitely agree with you. It's just it seems that people are puffed up on all these "facts" they "know" about when all they are doing is repeating what someone else told them. It's irritating sometimes. Really like listening to a marionette.

    @ LaGs. I try to keep it in balance ;)
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