Knowledge can be painful. Learning about history and the things that are wrong in the world. Having memories of the mistakes you made, the things you said, the actions you didn’t take. Realizing that you’re wrong in your deepest beliefs. Or the opposite, which is more scary, taking the first idea and closing your mind to new points, and different views. Knowledge bargains with our realities every day. Franz Kafka pointed out once that ridiculous confusions, in some circumstances, can determine the course of a man’s life. Or like those who can build their meaning from whatever catches their eye, social media, their parents, or the things they find in gift shops.
Knowledge can be powerfully combined. The right knowledge and courage can make you determined, optimistic, and confident in your own abilities. But the wrong knowledge and courage can make you stubborn and deaf.
It only takes the wrong knowledge to make you run a marathon in the opposite way. One quote or one person can influence you for years, let alone decades. Or stick you in the same year, over and over. Have you ever had the impression of meeting someone after much time later finding them in the same job, with the same income, and the same way of speaking?
Knowledge is an act of transformation, it can make you change partially or completely. Knowledge connects you with others. James Baldwin once said “you think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, and then you read.” Knowledge can tear the appearance or character of something or someone, for better or for worse. But in regards to whom, in comparison to what?
What is it that makes us stick to the idea of selves and fix our minds blindly sometimes when the answers are right in front of us? To hear new opinions and forget them. To read new books and not change because of them. To be led by influence and not by decision? Herman Hesse pointed out the difference between searching and finding. When searching, we often see only what we’re looking for. Unable to find anything else, unable to let anything new enter our minds, we become obsessed with our goal. There are many things you don’t see, which are directly in front of your eyes. But finding means being free, being open, having no goal.
This searching, this desperate clinging to individual identity, this is the root of wrong knowledge shaping everything. The belief that we’re separate beings, isolated egos seeking meaning. And this false knowledge shapes everything we see. But what if that’s not just wrong, what if it’s the source of almost everything that goes wrong?
The philosopher Alan Watts pointed once that we do not “come into” this world, but we come out of it. As leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples”. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. A rare experience by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin.
Watts tells us that this illusion creates two results. First is that our attitude to the world “outside” us is incredibly hostile. We are forever “conquering” nature, space, mountains, deserts, bacteria and insects, instead of learning to cooperate with them in a harmonious order. This inevitably leads to ignoring the basic dependence of all things and events, and will end by destroying the very environment from which we emerge.
Second is that we have no common sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common. It’s just your opinion against mine, and therefore the most aggressive, violent and insensitive propagandist makes the decisions.
This illusion of separation doesn’t just affect how we see ourselves, but it shapes entire societies. As author Ryan Holiday wrote once, it is the reason why one side of town is pretty and well “manicured” and the other isn’t, why one group is bailed out and the other carries on, why some crimes are punished severely and the others get a slap on the wrist, why the rich start the wars but the poor die in them.
Bishop Desmond Tutu described the ancient African word Ubuntu the same way, pointing out that it is the essence of being human, corresponding to the fact that “you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness.” So did Nelson Mandela, saying that the greatest self-interest would be that of enabling the community around you to improve.
It might seem, then, that uncommon sense and our need to balance can lead us astray, and wait for some genius to invent a new religion, a philosophy of life, a set of beliefs in which every individual can feel its meaning in the world as a whole. But this, as history has shown repeatedly, is not enough. Tribes become unfriendly to one another. Religions are divisive and quarrelsome. They are a form of dependence upon separating the “saved” from the “damned.” Even those who are liberals play the game of “we’re-more-tolerant-than-you.”
We often depend on others to understand who we are. But instead of borrowing someone else’s answers, shouldn’t we cultivate our own understanding from individual exploration? Building in the act of faith, for ourselves first, and then recognizing that this very individuality exists only through our connection with others?
Faith is, above all, openness—an act of trust in the unknown. You cannot have religion without faith, but you can have faith without religion. Belief clings, faith lets go. Hence, irrevocable commitment to any belief is not only intellectual suicide—it is positive unfaith, because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world.
Belief unsettles, it doesn’t allow reality.
Belief lies to the present, it can make us try to be better than we are, rather than being who we are.
Belief plays by the hard rules, it discriminates what could matter to us.
Belief is a close friend of “Resistance”. They play together, they seek each other. They swallow your thoughts into a thinking cycle saying “there’s a way out if you keep waiting”, it abhors finitude, it promotes the idea of “maybe tomorrow.”
This brings us to a humble recognition: you cannot have beliefs without an identity, but you can have an identity without beliefs. Understanding this concept is the essence of the leaf from the tree metaphor. So are the seasons with the tree, so we become one with it. A game of on and off; an open mind into the unknown; a reminder of what not to do.
This requires the frank recognition of your dependence upon others, even your enemies, underlings, outgroups, and, indeed, upon all other forms of life whatsoever. That being blind, intolerant, and careless about this destroys our sense of individuality altogether. That we cannot be unique…if there is no one else.
Watts hence says that the only “Book” that he would like to slip to his children would itself be slippery. It would be a temporary medicine, not a diet. In the words of Annie Dillard, knowledge “does not vanquish mystery, or obscure its distant lights.” It’s just a point of departure, not a perpetual point of reference.
To listen more… instead of speaking.
To join the herd… while also relating to others.
To cling for a while… and then let go.
Sources
[1] The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts
[2] Meditation for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman
[3] Right Thing Right Now - Ryan Holiday
[4] Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
[5] The Castle - Franz Kafka