Sunday, September 7, 2008

Ignorance is bliss - burden of knowledge

I don't know how I should tell people about the problem of burden of knowledge. However, I think this has become a phenomenon with people thriving to aquire more knowledge. The more we know, the more we try to see the world from behind the colored glasses of that knowledge. Thats why probably we have stopped seeing the world as seen by a child with his simplicities.

To give a practical scenario of the problem, let me give you an example. If someday my wife can't lit up the gas stove of my home, i would probably try to see if there is any gas in the cylinder, then try to unscrew the burner and then lodge a complaint with the concerned person. However, i may not try to lit up the gas with an alternative lighter, say with a match box. Hence my thought processing goes from complex to more complex logical flow of events. However, my wife would probably try the last method, say try with an alternative lighter.

All of us know that we start our programming career with the Hello World problem. In a simple C++ environment it is few lines of code. However, the same poblem can be solved by applying knowledge of distributed computing, design pattern, UML and so on and so forth. May be when we start applying all these knowledge to print a simple Hello World sentence on the screen, it may not be possible for a newcomer to decipher the code.

As i was a student of Electronics & TeleCommunication engineering, i have felt it strongly that if the basic purpose of the subject of communication is lost in the wilderness of some fourier analysis and frequency domain-time domain analysis, then it does not meet the need of the education. i believe that if the purpose of subject like economics go away from the well-beingness of people to the maze of some probability and calculus equations, then the basic purpose of economy is defeated.

Hence i believe knowledge is powerful as long as it makes our life simpler; otherwise it becomes a burden. My Mom used to say one adage quite often which goes like this...

"Je Janena Uttor-Pub...
Tar janbe saday sukh..."

Thats why probably it is said that "Ignorance is bliss"......

So we must utilize our knowledge to simplify our lives or else it becomes a monster.....

I would like to conclude this discussion with the following words of wisdom from Hindu philosophy:

"
asato ma sadgamaya
tamaso ma jyotirgamayo
mrityu ma amritum gamaya
"

This means

"O Lord! take me from the world of untruth to the world of truth...
O Lord! take me from the world of darkness to the world of lights...
O Lord! take me from the world of death to the world of immortality....
"

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