Knowledge: A steering stream of sustenance

“I envision a collapsing world without ascendancy, and a senseless talk of ascendancy without knowledge.”

Knowledge is a trampoline, propelling your thoughts with consistency. While it raises you up for a jiffy, you come down again to reap momentum. There is no end to it. It’s a continuous journey to the top of a mountain, whose crest remains unseen. When knowledge says adieu, with it goes consciousness far afield. Knowledge helps us to remain cognizant about the world, its happenings. It helps us relate with our ambiance.

Knowledge endows us power, that power to conquer anything insurmountable. When we say that there is nothing called impossible, we say so because we have something called knowledge, which can crumple the ‘im’ from impossible. Science says we humans are the only creatures with a self-conscious demeanor. The ‘self’ here is synonymous to awareness which is nothing but knowledge.

Man has emerged out to be the most knowledgeable creature in the cosmos. From ultra-fast tachyons to ultra small nucleons, there is no matter in world that remains concealed from the super intellect human. He has the absolute power of the world. He rules the cosmos with his extraordinary brain power. Such knowledge has helped man conquer over the nature’s natural system, the tremendously large planetary bodies compared to which man is just a pin’s tip.

The world is aware of the great, Abraham Lincoln. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was a self-educated lawyer in Illinois, a Whig Party leader, state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the Congress during the 1840's. He took the power of the States in his hand. He encouraged the building of canals, banks, roads etc and won the heart of million people. He led the states through the brutal civil war and helped it emerge out as a powerful nation.

 When a man running a tea-stall on a foot path can augment and conquer the ascendancy of a nation by gaining awareness of the vox puopuli, there remains no doubt to what knowledge can conquer. (In reference to Narendra Modi). While examples to this remain countless, power endowed by knowledge remains invincible.

Knowledge and power are mutually inclusive events. With knowledge comes intellect, with intellect comes authority. Now questions to this philosophy arise. They say such facts are meant to be in words only, cause they are not influential in today’s wayward world, were nothing remains to be seen except the sham show of people. The world seems to endow power to the educated class, but that power turns out to be negative. Where knowledge can give someone power, power can give someone gluttony (greed). So indirectly, we may question knowledge to have a pessimistic impact too? 

Before answering to this clever question, let us ponder over the discrepancy between knowledge and education. While education may or may not make us knowledgeable, knowledge invariably delivers the true essence of education. No doubt education makes us knowledgeable, but it’s not the absolute deliverer. Knowledge can be gained through personal scrutiny, public interactions, study of our environs etc.  

When we say ‘knowledge is power’, what actually it delivers is ‘true knowledge is right power.’ Knowledge itself delivers the quintessence of truth. Where knowledge resides, deceptiveness can never have shelter. So when a person acquiring power does not utilize it in the right sense, asserts negative authority, it indirectly means that he hasn't gained the right knowledge, or rather, no knowledge at all. We all human beings are in need of this right knowledge but satirically, hardly any of us have the knowledge to know what it is.  Education can give you what is meant to make you knowledgeable, molding this education into a substance with truth. Ethics and integrity is what is called knowledge. It is one of the hardest things to recognize, but one of the simplest things to acquire and implicate, once you have it.

Knowledge gives one a reason for existence. It comes from within.  Knowledge cannot be forced upon someone. Talking about some real-life heroic personalities like Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi etc. who lead the nation single handedly with powerful fidelity and dedication, the proverb seems to be even more pragmatic. Power can be showcased not only in the field of politics but other fields like science, arts and humanities. When Aryabhata invented the place value system, his knowledge added power to the non-significant zero, without which we would still have been tangled in the roman systems. He is now recognized for his skilled mathematical implications and his legendary work, Āryabhaṭīya and the Arya-siddhanta. The famous Leonardo Da Vinci with is knowledge of creativity and ingenuity, gave power and added vibrancy to his paintings like the Last supper and Mona Lisa. Whatever the field is, adding the intellectual side of your brain to it gives power. It gives it existence.

It’s time now that we start setting examples like these great men. What is still left to be exposed in us is the ‘self’. Knowledge is hidden in the cascades of our minds. It cannot be unlocked without the key of exploration. The more you delay, the more the cascade catches rust. Knowledge comes from within. Generate the knowledge within you, prove your existence. The cascade’s key is not a day’s labor, it is a lifetime journey. If one wants to rule the world with his power, have his identity imprinted in the books of history, the only key to this is knowledge. The human mind is meant to be explored and exploited. Knowledge is meant to be grabbed and imbibed. Power is meant to be earned and experienced.

“We are no longer in the dispensation of age and experience. We are in the era of knowledge and information. Information leads a true leader and a true leader leads others.”

― Israelmore Ayivor