Prudence Makes The Librarian II
That the reader may enjoy trivialities without losing sight of the powerful
Still, on the subject of prudence, I have permitted myself to be prudent — to perform a specific incision in one sense and parsimony in another sense concerning knowledge and learning. For if learning is free enterprise, we must approach it with precision as much as intent if we will eat the fruits of it.
Wherever you see “knowledge” in this essay, please think of all the learning you may do both within school walls and outside it. You may include Television shows, dancing under the moonlight in the village square, arguing over a hearty lunch with friends, insulting a dude on Reddit, and debating Karoline Marx on Twitter. Where learning may happen now is so broad that prudence must be recovered.
But having demonstrated in private a measure of prudence, performed the essential parsimony, and congratulated myself on showing prudence, a pebble remained in my shoe in the form of the question, “why perform this exercise?” Where I had the details of the parsimony ready, I still lacked its animating question: what gives it life, what animates it? The answer to the question: abundance. This parsimony was necessitated by abundance — when we have an endless supply of a thing, how do we behave, and how should we behave? In all things, we must avoid carelessness. Why prudence? Because abundance.
Under scarcity, we are forced to be prudent. You must manage your resources, maximise opportunities, and in the classic sense, strike while the iron is hot; you cannot afford to strike later. But when given a monstrous supply of such resources, prudence gets forgotten quickly. And always remember, we take it for granted that we take things for granted. When you have all that you need, never having to worry about the next supply, your reason to be prudent diminishes. Only if it is habitual will you continue to be prudent under conditions of abundance. But here now, speaking of abundance, I speak specifically of the age of information; which is more precisely knowledge and the platforms where learning may occur. Because I am writing this at a time where everything that can be known can be known to anyone who wishes to know. I am writing at a time when you can peer into corridors that were reserved for specific professionals; an age where knowledge is removed from any context that may constrain it, leaving all things knowledge to wade and wander in the world. Information in the form of text, audio, and video no longer come one after the other; we face a deluge of them. It is therefore inevitable that we will adjust our sensibilities to receive and cope with them. Walking to your city library and switching on Z-Library on your phone have different effects. What you are not listening to, however, is how Z-Library — metaphorically speaking — adjusts your mental immune system.
As the human female may understand, receiving increasing male attention — especially unsolicited — causes one to adjust. For many, they develop a type of cynicism that causes them to be rude, put on the resting b*** face, move more in groups, and invest in a lot of pepper sprays. Don’t get angry with them if you observe any of these behaviors listed above; like the Ring to Frodo, they have been dealt a card that they did not choose. But what I am getting at is that more is not necessarily better, and it is just sometimes harmful. The human body and mind always adjusts to abundance and very often, numbness is an expected reaction to abundance.
Consider also water. When thirsty, a bottle of water, maybe two, works. But if I say that you are thirsty so here goes a 120 litre drum of water. I expect you to finish it in the next hour. I am, I believe, hoping that you will die but I am obviously too timid to just do it in a humane manner. Beware of hyponatremia — disease caused by drinking too much water. Water is good to quench your thirst; up to a point. After that threshold, you are dancing with death and danger. How much more the abundance of the things that feed in to our learning and education? How should you go about this problem? Or primo, what is the immediate reaction when you have so much to learn?
How we receive and cope, I observe are in two extremes: as extremely useless or as extremely useful — no middleway. Those who take the first view, to escape the loaded assertion of the power of knowledge, have to reduce everything that earns them no immediate benefit with the tag of uselessness. On the flip side, people with more tender minds hurry to accept everything as useful; very useful in fact. The problem with having these extremes is of course that the middle is diminished which in this sense means that there is left no room for trivialities and non-instrumental knowledge.
Harping on the problem as referenced by my blame on the English language that it is a reductive language. Borrowing from ‘Jack’ Lewis, the best way to describe the English Language is that it is algebraic rather than arithmetic. I mean this in the sense that the English Language because of its farcing limited vocabulary, allows one word to be used in more than one sense. So, as I pointed out, what has been condensed into knowledge in English has several words for them in other languages. This mistake, this condensation, has allowed us to construe all knowledge as power and neglect that sometimes knowledge is not power, knowledge can be very trivial, it may be beneficial but not instrumental, and these are not one and the same things.
The implication of that condensation at a time of abundance such as this is that anyone who mistakenly believes that the best thing in the world is to find knowledge as knowledge is power will be left pursuing everything under the illusion that everything he finds has such meaning or power. What makes knowledge parsimony very relevant is to free the reader from the burden of the “knowledge is power, France is Bacon” notion. The secondary consequence, I hope, will be that the reader may enjoy trivialities without losing sight of the powerful. And thirdly, the reader can recognise the less instrumental styles of knowledge which are no less relevant to human flourishing.
But to take a sweet jab (as I would not be happy until I do; I deserve to be happy), all and everyone who loves the notion that knowledge is power live under the well-packaged illusion that they love knowledge when what they love is power. Why power? Perhaps they live a fearful life, seeking strict order, and they hope to hedge their lives on all sides with the ugly concrete slabs of instrumental power, or even very simply, they are just show-offs. End of jab.
While the details of the parsimony will come under a third and possibly last installment of the prudent series, I wish that you will love to learn because it is good to at its basest – it is wise, not hinging their ability on what is either demanded or with the desire to strip things naked. I wish that you will be able to enjoy the trivial yet have a better grasp of the powerful. That you will not be so blinded by the power of some type of learning and knowledge that you fail to recognise the invisible yet beneficial. There are many more reasons to read a book or debate Karoline Marx; the narcissistic defense of truth is not necessarily one of them. Be a librarian, be prudent.
Here of course is your meme; let a pigeon live in you:
Wow this is good