“They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield.”
―Philip Freneau
.
And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again?
Archilochus
The young man raises a vitally important point, and asks an excellent question.
Factual knowledge per se is as useless as an old public library filled with wonderful books gathering dust, yellowing around the edge of the pages, and permeated with worms and mildew, because NO ONE READS and DIGESTS their CONTENT.
Factual knowedge is like a brickyard filled with tons and tons of neatly stacked bricks waiting for a builder to come and use them to build a garden wall, and pathway, a terrace, or an imposing edifice.
Eisntein said "IMAGINATION is MORE IMPORTANT than KNOWLEDGE."
He's certainly correct.
Unless we develop a tremendous CURIOSITY that leads to an UNDERSTANDING of the IMPLICATIONS, RAMIFICATIONS and POINTS of LINKAGE in the "DATA" we collect that generally lies dormant in our atrophying psyches, we become little more than COMPUTERS, ourselves, that no one has ever bothered to plug in.
We mistake becoming a DATA DUMP for being "EDUCATED."
"Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" TS Eliot
4 comments:
The young man raises a vitally important point, and asks an excellent question.
Factual knowledge per se is as useless as an old public library filled with wonderful books gathering dust, yellowing around the edge of the pages, and permeated with worms and mildew, because NO ONE READS and DIGESTS their CONTENT.
Factual knowedge is like a brickyard filled with tons and tons of neatly stacked bricks waiting for a builder to come and use them to build a garden wall, and pathway, a terrace, or an imposing edifice.
Eisntein said "IMAGINATION is MORE IMPORTANT than KNOWLEDGE."
He's certainly correct.
Unless we develop a tremendous CURIOSITY that leads to an UNDERSTANDING of the IMPLICATIONS, RAMIFICATIONS and POINTS of LINKAGE in the "DATA" we collect that generally lies dormant in our atrophying psyches, we become little more than COMPUTERS, ourselves, that no one has ever bothered to plug in.
We mistake becoming a DATA DUMP for being "EDUCATED."
A tragedy for Civilization, indeed.
"Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" TS Eliot
Egg-ZACK-Lee, Thersites!
Egg-ZACK-Lee!!!
ALSO:
Where is the JOY we've lost in Fear, Hesitation, Cowardice, Equivocation, Nursing Grudges, Compromise, Cynical Rejection of Faith?
What tragedy dominates the life of those who have lost –– or never been encouraged to develop –– the capacity to WONDER!
What PATHOS characterizes lives who submit to the cowardly, effeminate notion that SAFETY is preferable to FREEDOM!
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