The Fine Boundary Between Ignorance and Knowledge

Navigating the delicate boundary between ignorance and knowledge is a perpetual journey in the pursuit of wisdom and understanding.

So you thought, “Well, since ignorance and knowledge are the exact opposite of each other, so the gap within them is so wide and not connected”, right?

Well, first of all, these two words are really not the exact opposite of each other, as a matter of fact, I don’t think anything is! Secondly, they are not as far apart as you thought they were, they are just two connected unrelated words. You still don’t get it right? Huh! Not to worry, you’ll soon, just read further and I promise you’ll get it.

Now, if you check closely, they’ve really been a lot of deliberation on the subject of ignorance and knowledge. A lot of people; professional and non, have given their own perspectives on this matter and as it seems, more and more ideas are still being released out there.

Well for me, there’s really nothing there to deliberate about. The difference between ignorance and knowledge is so slight that just knowing or not knowing a thing can move you from one of them to the other.

So there’s really nothing so ambiguous and intricate about the both of them, it’s just that wisdom needs to be applied in both of them alike so that you won’t end up doing the un-needful and I guess you know what that means.

Ignorance is like a default position, a state of inertia—kind of. If you really wanna get to knowledge, then you’ve got to move. Just like Benjamin Disraeli said, “To be conscious of your ignorance is a great step in knowledge”.

“Every man’s knowledge is an advantage and every man’s ignorance is a bondage”—Anonymous. So this means that for every knowledge you acquire you’ve gained an edge over that particular area, a little or a large one, as the case may be.

Africans will often say that what you don’t know won’t kill you. This is a very wrong way of thinking, and you can see that when you compare African nations to other great nations in the world.

“The disease of ignorance can only be cured in the school of knowledge”—anonymous. This shows that ignorance is a disease, and a deadly one at that and only the school of knowledge can cure it.

While ignorance seems to be the license to bondage, knowledge is the price of freedom. So I often ask myself, “Why would someone just prefer to purchase a license for their bondage, when they can actually pay less for their own freedom?”

EVERYONE KNOWS SOMETHING YOU DON’T

Like I said before there’s no big difference between knowledge and ignorance. Little things you know can really help you to move out of ignorance to knowledge.

So in this, you can really know little things every day of your life, because you meet different people every day, even if not different, at least they are people and you know that every one you’ll ever meet or come across with knows something that you don’t.

Well, your ability to communicate with people, effectively, will really determine how much you can learn from other people.

You know, some of us think we know too much and as such nothing that anyone will ever say makes sense to you. You feel you alone can say what is right and others are just a bunch of dumb asses.

Well, even the so-called “dumb asses” still know something that you don’t. It doesn’t necessarily mean that all you’ll learn will just be your interest in life alone. You can learn from other people’s characters and behaviours and that’s even one of the best ways to know and learn lessons about life.

See the people around you, learn to observe their every action and you’ll be amazed at how much you’ll learn from them, indirectly though.

HOW OFTEN DO YOU THINK ABOUT IMPROVING YOUR KNOWLEDGE?

Every one of us wants to get better but how often do we even really think about that? Really, how often do you think about improving your knowledge? Do you even want to get more knowledge as the day goes by?

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There is not much you need to do in order to keep you away from a definite state of ignorance. Just be sure of what you want for yourself and be willing to go for it with all determination and willingness.

You really have to think about improving your knowledge always because that will help you to always get ahead in life in anything you may do.

Now, how do you feel when you don’t know something that you’re supposed to know? I bet you always feel terrible and see yourself as dumb or something. That’s the more reason you’re to keep improving on yourself and get to know about things you don’t know.

Don’t refrain from learning anything that you know will be a step away from your state of ignorance. So learn as much as you can and for as long as you live because the truth is, you really cannot stop learning new things every day of your life.

YOU PROBABLY THINK THE LINE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE IS MUCH MORE THICKER

You know as humans, we all have our different perspectives and opinion about seemingly a lot of things, if not everything. So probably your own thought about knowledge and ignorance may be that they both have a very thick line between them that it’s difficult to transverse.

Well, I’m sure you know by now that you’re what you think. Just as Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either bad or good but thinking makes it so”. So whatever you think of, is what it is, because that’s the picture that has been created in your mind already.

So it may seem that you’ve viewed ignorance and knowledge as two worlds apart. No doubt, they are really not the same. However, I really do think that little trivial things make the difference in both of them. What you may count as inconsequential and unimportant may be that very thing that will cancel out the so-called thick line that you thought existed between both of them.

It’s really all in your thinking. I don’t really see anything as difficult because if I do, that’s exactly what it will be. So even if it is obviously “difficult”, I still find the simplicity out of it.

WHAT STREAMLINING CAN DO TO YOU

Now, whatever you do in this life, don’t streamline your mind to just one aspect. That’s the more reason I’m writing an article talking about both knowledge and ignorance. You really cannot afford to just know one side of the “story” because if you do, that’s when you’ll see the imaginary line as thick and not thin. It’s all in your mind, just like I mentioned earlier.

Streamlining can make you miserable, like extremely miserable. You would think you know something until someone comes to counter you or debunk whatever you thought you knew before then.

I really so acknowledge the fact that I don’t know everything, but that doesn’t mean I will stop learning because I know that one can’t exhaust knowledge.

Even this article you’re reading, I really cannot say this is all there is to know about it but at least the little I know is what I’m sharing with you now and that’s what I call generosity in knowledge.

So don’t think that knowing one thing is enough for you. By doing so, you’re even making your brain lazy. Work your brain out so that it expands and build new nerve cells every now and then and this will broaden your perspective about everything else.

SO YOU REALLY DO HAVE A CHOICE

You can eventually decide what you want for yourself. You can decide to remain where you are or rather move forward by getting yourself more equipped with the knowledge, which is your only super-power.

Since you now know that there really isn’t a big, ambiguous demarcation between ignorance and knowledge, you now begin to see vague and obscure things as clear and lucid and nobody will be able to intimidate you with what he/she knows because you know you can even get better than they are and that’s what really makes the whole thing really interesting.

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THE BOTTOM LINE

Nothing is really new under the sun. whatever you think you know now has already been known by someone else even before you knew about it.

Even the things you tag as “new” are really old and ancient, just that it “newly” got to you that’s why you can say that you just learnt something new.

Just keep improving on your level of knowledge. Be versatile in your knowledge and always learn to learn something from every person you meet.

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