"It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge." -Enrico Fermi
While conversing with a co-worker today, I began to go into a political tangent - and quickly fell into an agitated state. At the conclusion of my tangent, one co-worker who had overheard my knowledgeable arguments said to another, "He's like a walking encyclopedia of useless knowledge." Whilst one could construe such an observation as a compliment, I, in my agitated state -- could do nothing of the sort. To me, it was a synopsis of the ignorance of the modern American mind, and it is to that mind that I present this question -- Can knowledge, no matter the sort, ever be truly useless?
To those who would deign to answer "Yes", I present with this quote.
"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it." -Samuel Johnson
1 comment:
But against that:
Even Nietzsche knew there were limits to the "usefulness", that is, the utility, of knowledge. If you are mentally handicapped,--we are speaking of 70% of the US population and 100% of the Eagles' fan base--- is there really any survival value in knowing it? Think of the collapse of self-esteem, the erosion of self-confidence, and the general malaise that would result with this degree of self- transparency. Stupid, obtuse, cretinous people rarely have any redeemable social value and only manage to survive through a herculean act of denial. "The meek and ignorant shall inherit the earth,-- grunt, grunt."
One could make a credible argumant that Man has survived both by what he knows and has chosen to forget---that is, selective ignorance. The whole corpus of historical knowledge rests on ignorance: "History is the lie that everyone agrees to." A good lie, that enhances life and makes us go on with this Roman farce, is much more "useful" to the continuation of the species than knowing how many stars revolve around galactic center or that we have an ape in our extended pedigree. Andre Gide
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