One thing I know that I know nothing. What do you know?
Dr Kumar Kaushish
Holistic Mental Health, Wellness, Lifestyle, Psychotherapist, Coach helping navigate Personal, Professional, Family Challenges and Enjoy Meaningful - Purposeful - Successful Business, Life, Career, Personality, Relations
I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing. The more I know, the more I realize that I know nothing. – All goes to Socrates
Is there anyone wiser? No one. We’re all ‘work in progress’.
No one can claim to possess knowledge of all the world secrets or has pinnacle of wisdom. We are all ignorant of something or other, at times we evade and dodge, often times we learn to live with our blind spots. No questions raised so no answers. We pretend, we know it all.
Tour in all directions, talk to the wisest and most capable, find someone wiser of all.
Each of us knows something, not everything. We all think, we know it all, but we don’t.
Wiser is he who at least knows that he knows nothing.
I think, therefore, I am. This halts the infinite regress as it’s possible to doubt your knowledge, but it’s impossible to doubt your own existence because simply by thinking, you prove that your conscious exists.
“I know that I know nothing”, means, the physical world we live in, is actually just a shadow.
The real world is that of “ideas” or “forms”. These are non-physical essences existing outside of our physical world. Everything in our dimension is just an imitation, or projection of these “ideas” or “forms”.
The perfection of senses – taste, color, smell, texture, touch only exist in the realm of forms and every object we see in real life is just a shadow, an imitation of the perfect one. A variation. Not even close to replica.
The best we human can do is just think what a perfect human, look, character, relation, life, world is, and try to stick to that ideal as much as possible.
Perception is the key. Viewed from our perspectives, we can never be sure if any piece of information is correct, incomplete or false. We cannot say for sure because there are always arguments for and against to cancel each other out.
Each of us perceives differently on varying degrees. It’s better not to make hasty judgements.
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We don’t achieve happiness because our minds are always in a state of conflict by coming to conclusions in the fact of contradictory arguments. We see it all from our standpoint, negating others viewpoint without recognizing that others degree of perception is different from ours.
We cannot discover the exact truth for anything, unless it is self-evident.
Entire knowledge and plethora of information in this world is insignificant compared to how much is still left to be discovered. Most likely a lot more.
It doesn’t mean that “I know only the tiniest bit, and even that’s probably incorrect”.
Comparing ourselves to humans living 300 years in the past or 300 years in future, gives us a solace that we have a giant wealth of information now from the past ones, and we are building on the same foundation for the future humans.
Let’s consider, “I know that I know nothing” as a ‘Noble Lie’.
We all know something and have our beliefs and convictions about how the world works. We don’t have to replace our beliefs and ideas with others, but to encourage others to think with empathy and embrace this philosophy as a way of life, and vice versa. We are all same but different. Accept it.
We humans need to break away from ‘monologue’ and develop a method of ‘dialogue’ which involves ‘questioning and answering’ each other to expose hidden ideas and meanings to perceptions, reveal false beliefs and improve our understanding of this world?
Perceptual language works parallel to the languages we all know and acts as a vehicle to seek and absorb the true depth of a society or a culture.
In almost all cases, the ‘question and answer’ technique helps figure out exactly what others know, or they think they know. This will put to light the flawed logics and inconsistent arguments.
The best way to live life to the fullest is to unravel honest truth, and ponder the world and its workings, and seek moral goodness.
Managing Director leading innovation in Biotechnology, Enterprise Software and SaaS
2 年So well said. Thank you for sharing. I would perhaps offer, with humility, many of us know a little about some topics, we all know nothing about most topics. Recognition of our attempts to gain understanding, with humility about our real understanding. And then there is Wisdom, in how we utilise our understanding. I would agree that the necessary beginning of Wisdom is Humility. These concepts often appear elusive in Modern, Western societies; but we can learn, and benefit our societies. I remain an optimist.