Knowledge And Democacy
Manojendu Choudhury
15 June 2007, 18:22How does one define knowledge? A quick search through the various dictionaries yields the result that knowledge is the state of knowing, familiarity, acquaintance, awareness from study or investigation. But knowledge differs from data or information in that new knowledge may be created from existing knowledge using logical inference. If information is data plus meaning then knowledge is information plus processing.
Knowledge is an appreciation of the interconnected details among various chunks of facts which, in isolation, are of lesser value. The crux of the matter is: knowledge is dynamic and evolves as humans evolve. And one needs to keep on exercising the grey cells, continuously, ad-infinitum.
Knowledge is the corner stone of all activities, viz. academic, artistic, emotional, business, etc. The purpose of any human activity employs the usage of the current knowledge, while all useful activities result in enrichment of the existing body of knowledge. All forms of human oppression feed on ignorance and knowledge alleviates ignorance. Hence all paths to freedom entail assimilation of knowledge. Therefore the ultimate quest of humans on earth is the quest for knowledge, which results in freedom.
All adventures, journeys into the unknown, are the manifestation of this quest. Nothing is more fulfilling than completing a segment of this never ending journey with a heart filled with the awe that accompanies any new discovery. Assimilation of new knowledge is both rationally as well as emotionally fulfilling. To put it more succinctly, all joys of the heart and the mind result from, consciously or unconsciously, assimilation of new knowledge.
Since knowledge is equated with power, and rightly so, history is replete with innumerable instances of ‘power-mongers’ making desperate efforts to curb the masses from accumulating knowledge. The business of the ‘power-mongers’ critically depends on callowness and incomprehension on the part of the people over whom they execute their powers.
This is true for all classes of ‘power-mongers’; be it a king over his subjects, the president over the citizens, the priest over the devout believers, or the corporate over the consumers. The business of these ‘power-mongers’ prospered in the medieval ages, until the renaissance, the industrial revolution and democracy woke up the western world (Europe, to be precise), Their colonization of the rest of the world had a positive side-effect in stirring up the long buried concept of freedom and knowledge as a reaction to their presence.
Knowledge is not something you earn or gain, it is a level of realization that one attunes oneself to, both emotionally and rationally. All individuals have to undergo the requisite struggle to fight their own ignorance in order to attain enlightenment. The purpose of democracy is to provide access to knowledge to all and sundry in society, irrespective of class, strata, or any other branch of the societal set up to which any particular individual may belong. A critical test of the state of a democratic environ is to examine the extraneous obstacles put in front of the individuals’ path to knowledge assimilation.
Perhaps it is a Utopian dream to think of such an open, just and free society. But even in the darkest eras of human history the flame of knowledge could never completely die, for that is the essence of human existence. It was always preserved, and will always be preserved, by some small fragments of the societal set up (which at times may constitute of individuals, the smallest fragment of a society). All human efforts that toil day and night to keep the flame of knowledge burning are driven by this Utopian dream, and the undertakers of these efforts find their purpose of existence in this toil.
