Knowledge Is an Expensive Power.

Spinoza believed that increasing our knowledge about the causal structure of the world would not only bring an understanding of the “why” but at the same time this would reduce the power it can have on humans. In other words, we wouldn’t be affected by our circumstances since we would have found the logical explanation behind these and therefore bringing the individual into a state of equanimity.

This reminded me of a quote I bumped into somewhat recently. The quote said something along the lines of:

“We suffer due to insufficient information”.

It truly was thought-provoking, and still is since I am not entirely sure I have a conclusion. I’ll unravel some of my thoughts about this with you.

The first example that came to mind was the experience of loss and the stages of grief that come along. Understanding what happened in this sort of scenario doesn’t seem to help the individual feel less depressed. Then I thought… “Well… we don’t know what’s on the other side”-- there’s insufficient information.

But there’s a catch. If we could have access to that information, it would either help us or make it worse.

My dad recently passed away, if I could have known for a fact that he was smiling and blissful in some Utopia, I’m quite certain my grief would have been greatly reduced because having that information would make it more tolerable.

What if he wasn’t?

If a Heaven exists, so must a Hell. That means that if I were to knock on the door that reveals where my dad landed after his passing there is a 50% chance that he is in either one. Would I want to know? How could someone ever recover if they happened to know that they were in a Hell? Could we ever enjoy our time alive knowing this?

[Quick note on Heaven and Hell: Just as humans tend to anthropomorphize God, we do the same with Heaven and Hell by attributing worldly characteristics and when we do that it paints a very different image in our head therefore applying limitations where there shouldn’t be any, at least not the sort we could ever possibly think of.]

All I can think of at this very moment is how grateful I am to not be given access to that knowledge. The feeling of hope is working in the background, serving as an armor, protecting me in the absence of information.

There is certain knowledge that it wiser for us not to know. Not knowing brings us more equanimity than knowing could ever bring, which is why the quote “Ignorance is bliss” is so famous because there’s a lot of truth to that.

“There is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”—Alan Watts

There’s a price to pay with every piece of knowledge we gather. If you asked me what would be ideal in this pursuit, I would say: “to increase ignorance at the same rate we increase knowledge”; but that violates one of the basic laws of logic [the law of the excluded middle], which I will attempt to defy regardless.

Knowledge does resolve some internal and external disputes but having full knowledge of everything possible would isolate humans from other aspects they do not realize are what keep them afloat.

Many will place such a high value on knowledge—myself included—however, this opens Pandora’s Box. Can too much knowledge destroy emotion? Asphyxiate the romanticism out of human life?

“Knowledge makes the heart grow fonder” said no one ever. It’s been absence that makes the heart grow fonder—with a little bit of knowledge.