bliss by any other name

With the holidays comes a season of social interaction on a level I always face with fear. It's the worst kind of social interaction where norms are so strongly enforced and my paranoia of being truly and deeply offensive is at odds with my instinct to be nothing but open with my loved ones. As always, my fears far out pace reality and the season was a lot of fun. Not surprising to you, who are statistically likely to know me very, very well, my family is generally very intellectual and conversation is always interesting.

After a few whiskeys and a huge meal, I said to my godmother that I fear all who say they know anything. It was embedded in a conversation about religion which descended from a conversation about politics. It's a thought I have always and express seldom. Socrates was on the money as far as I am concerned. We know nothing. We have faith to form axioms and belief to give us the rest. The "knowledge" we have is highly contextualized. This belief of mine gives me a deep mistrust of those that say they know the origin, purpose and future of the universe without any doubt - from any source secular or divine.

We hosted yet another meal and a guest told me I know too much to be happy. We'd been discussing the fed and how the interest rates, tender and other financial aspects of the US government work. After I spent a while going on about it, apparently I'd proved I was too much in the know to qualify for any ignorance benefits. If knowledge is power and power grants right, I guess I have the right to be miserable. Of course, knowledge is only power when it's knowledge of the right kind. What kind of knowledge counts for power has changed over history. Knowledge of how our government's financing works is useful to a point. But what could I *do* with that? Could it give me power over something to know this?

Our ancestors knew the stars better than we do now. They made monuments to track them and to signify their impact in the world as they saw it. And they had great stories to pass this knowledge on. Why? I believe that knowledge was the power to farm, navigate and do many other things with great success through careful planning. Success begot growth, growth begot specialization, specialization begot civilization, civilization begot cities and cities begot good for nothing loafers who didn't need to navigate or farm. But they still knew the stories that came from the stars. In many cases, they used that knowledge to wield new power. The stories had power because they were revered, and they were revered because they have delivered the ability to do things so well in the past. These new keepers of the stories established their right to power by showing they "know" what the stories mean - never mind that the meaning lay back on the farm or out on the plains.

What is knowledge when it is only for the sake of knowing? What did all that knowing get us today? Power suddenly disconnected from its original right. Power used for other things. People who "know" the stories still hold the power. And so I fear them a little bit. Mostly because I believe they don't understand what they think they know. I fear those that follow them a lot more. Those who believe in those who think they know are very dangerous. Even if all they do is live in bliss.