Our Greatest Asset - Current Knowledge

Knowing is an ever-ongoing process of life, therefore knowledge keeps on improving and updating. The question to be discussed here is 'should we ignore what we know today for something we may know tomorrow?' A direct answer is available in the proverb 'a bird in hand is better than two in the bush'. 


Last month, a frail helpless woman was mercilessly raped by a giant-sized man which he confessed also in front of his supporters. The man had no past records of this nature and some opined that some new facts may come to light proving him innocent. 

My argument was that in future we may come to know more of his crimes, unknown till now. So a future projection of information can not be the basis of pardoning him by the society. But the current knowledge on the issue proves him guilty and so I insisted on his trial in a court of law. 


Although knowledge is an ever-expanding thing, even then at any point of time, current knowledge is the greatest asset of humanity. Therefore, for any possible knowledge in future, current knowledge can never be ignored. For this very reason, to act on the basis of current knowledge, process of knowing on that subject has to be paused for the time being. This never means that the current knowledge is assumed to be ultimate and its further explorations not needed. Or, for that matter, any piece of information is valued at the current knowledge without a meaningful verification. 


Let us examine significance of current knowledge from the point of view of three phases of time - past, present and future. At present, our current knowledge is a product of our past. We are produced through experiences from whatever happened in the past. Thus, we get our present whole from our past, the main elements being our existence and our knowledge. This is the only significant of our past and nothing else. Our present existence and knowledge becomes foundation of our future in which our ambitions, desires, plans, etc are included. Our future is our target of life for which we get strength from our present. So, any negligence of our present existence and knowledge may adversely affect our future and we fail in achieving our target. For this reason, our present asset is our present which includes our current knowledge also.   

In-spite of this, we must be not only open to but curious also to gain more knowledge on every subject of our interest at any time we must plan our actions accordingly. Thus, any possible future addition to our knowledge can not be given place in our current plans. This could only be placed in our unanticipated knowledge and any action based on this may be after attaining that but not now. Because whatever in unanticipated, it could be anything and can not be made basis of actions.


For about a decade, death penalty through legal proceedings is being opposed whose basis is that the person may be proved not-guilty somewhere in the future and at that time, reversal of the death penalty shall not be possible, making it an injustice with the person punished. I am strongly opposed to this because such possibilities shall obstruct our decision making process in every field of human life making life of the whole humanity difficult. At every moment, strong well-considered decision is a valuable attribute of human-beings which must be strengthened continuously. Weakening it may imperil humanity.  

Thus, what we shall be tomorrow and what shall be our knowledge then, we can not ignore our current knowledge for that because this is the foundation stone of our future knowledge just as we can not construct a building ignoring its foundation.  

   

Anger, Disagreement and Rationality

An angry-man is often discarded by society because anger is treated as a negative attribute of personality. There are two aspects to it - getting angry and showing anger. It is said, "Wise persons get angry while foolish show it." An anger is always a result of a disagreement. So, to be angry requires both - 'courage of wisdom' and 'wisdom of courage' - to confront the situation. Conversely, concurrence is easy, needs no anger and raises no confrontation. It needs neither the courage nor the wisdom of any kind. 

When a person gets angry, he/she is ready to confront and this can only be when the person is sure of the situation's irrationality and his/her own rationality. Therefore, anger makes a person more rational than the persons concurring the situation. This is confirmed by a recent psychological research. 


Anger is, of course, may result in flawed thinking, increment in prejudice and trigger aggression. But these things happen only when the person displays his/her anger fiercely. A disagreement may be without display of anger but surely it accompanies an internal anger. Therefore, there is an invisible demarcation line between anger and disagreement. But when it comes to display of an anger, or being angry, the demarcation line gets highlighted. 

Indeed, an anger makes the person more careful and rational about the counter-view in order of getting prepared for a logical confrontation. Therefore, habitually angry-persons are habitually rational also. Only thing they lack is diplomacy, considered to be an asset in modern societies, but is a falsehood from morality point of view. 


Even when a person is in raze, psychologists have found that he/she becomes more careful and logical than he/she would normally be. Thus, an anger improves his/her analytical and decision making capabilities. He/she processes information more carefully and analytically. The only short-coming of a person in anger is that he/she may sometimes resort to more mental short-cuts in information processing. 

This leads to a conclusion that a habitually angry person proves to be the best decision maker provided he/she is cool at that moment. Therefore, even occasional cooling of a hot person is the greatest asset for the society and habitually cool persons have nothing to give to the society. 


Here one thing needs to be cleared. Anger and frustration are two different attributes of personality. In frustration, the person tends to become pessimistic and is the result. While the anger is a process with the person in vibrant thinking mode with a disagreement.

Creative Expression and Limit of Knowing

A creative expression has to be prefaced by many conscious intellectual activities such as knowing, pro-creative thinking, evaluation, etc. but for the actual process of expression, knowing has to be stopped assuming that enough has been known for affecting the expression. Conversely, keep on trying to know more and more puts hurdles in the process of creativity. 

Knowledge is infinite and shall never reach its ultimate state which proves that process of knowing must continue for ever and it is certainly a positive aspect of life. But the above argument proves that even the best of positive things of life have to be limited in serving many purposes of life. So, nothing remains positive under all circumstances.


A creative expression is a representation of what the creator knows, and its finality can be achieved only when the knowledge is accepted to be final, if not for ever at least for the time-being and for the particular purpose. 


Through knowing, knowledge is acquired and it is evaluated for serving the particular purpose of expression through another piece of knowledge stored in the memory. Thus, even an evaluation need finality of evaluating knowledge. Here again, the process of knowing need be stopped or paused.


Although above logic is derived for creative expressions, limiting the knowing process is desirables in almost all performances. Conversely, all performances are based on knowledge assumed to be enough for the time-being. If the process of knowing continues, performance can not be affected. 


Creative expressions are finally the works of our subconscious minds, once they are provided enough of fuel in form of knowledge. In this work, the conscious mind has to be contented with what it knows and then come to a state of 'not knowing any more'. This may be put as going beyond the conscious mind to the depth of subconscious mind. 



The processes of knowing and thinking are governed by conscious mind and the output is fed to the sub-conscious mind. Then the conscious mind stops functioning and the sub-conscious mind takes over for a creative expression of what is in its store. Any interference of conscious mind may dictate that the process of knowing is still not complete and the creative expression may not be possible. Since, sub-conscious mind is not involved in the processes of knowing and thinking, it assumes that it knows everything and starts the creative expression.        

Money and Happiness

First note in this regard is that money is a material possession while the happiness is an emotional possession and the two are rarely traded off. For money can't buy you love, it can at the most attract a lover/beloved, finding his/her true love is independent of your possession of money. Even then, money is important for living, the question is how much is needed for a happy survival.

There is a threshold of amount of money which is essential for a happy survival below which happiness may become unachievable. Simultaneously, more than this amount of money may be unnecessary or even a burden on life if the owner does not know to make good use of superfluous money. This threshold is dependent on the individual's circumstances particularly his/her daily earning capability. If someone is capable enough to earn what he/she needs, no accumulation of money may be needed.

Superfluous amount of money in possession is harmful in multiple ways -

• It makes people jealous of the person possessing the money making his/her relationships in the society strained.
• The superfluous money usually makes the owner proud of him/herself to the extent that he/she does not pay due regard to others having a lesser amount of money. This also makes his/her social contacts strained. 
• Anti-social elements in the society try to snatch the superfluous money from the owner endangering his/her safety of life and properties. 
• An owner of superfluous money invests his/her money to get it multiplied over time, thus multiplying his problems of owning superfluous money.
• By spending superfluous money, the owner may buy means of comforts and pleasures but he/she gets no time to enjoy these comforts and pleasures for his/her being busy in multiplying his/her money possession.    

Thus, in most of the cases, superfluous money ropes in more of it cumulatively and the owner gets involved in this multiplication cyclone that he/she has no time for anything else. 

Happiness lies in small things of life like enjoying company of  loved-ones, providing selfless service to needy of your capability. In case of enjoying a company, one need to differentiate between love and lust - the love is always freely reciprocated and is timeless, while the lust is always traded as a commodity and is time-bound. 

Providing selfless services of one's capability pays back in two important ways. The provider gets an immense satisfaction of feeling to be good to others, and the beneficiary tries to pay back through providing services of his/her own capability. So, in a selfless service, nothing gets lost, it needs no money and the psychological returns are immense. 

The main problem with seeking happiness through money is that the seeker does not fixes how much money he/she needs to be happy. With acquisition of some money, desire for more raises its head and the cycle continues for ever. Thus, the money intoxicates the owner. In this process, the seeker forgets that he was seeking money for gaining happiness.


This clarifies that if a seeker of happiness rightly estimates his/her need of money for being satisfied and happy and stops his/her chase of money after getting that much, he/she may be happy thereafter. But this exercise is seldom taken up by any body. Psychologically, no body enjoys his/her possessions because of his/her taking the possession for granted and not bothering to get pleasures out of it. However, the process of acquisition of money may be pleasurable just because of the fact that happiness lies in novel experiences.