The Curse Of Knowledge

The problem with knowledge is knowing. Once you know something, you may never know it. To know evokes a knower. The knower thinks of himself as an empty vessel that needs to be filled. Once it is filled, he can only see through it not without it. The knower likes to hold on to things, for he wants to be knowledgeable. "What is the point of knowing if not to be knowledgeable?" he thinks. Everything then takes a shade of his knowledge. He becomes impervious to the real world.

If you think you are a soul, you may never think of what else you can be, if "you" symbolizes something real. You see the world from the perspective of a soul, whose nature you have dreamt up. If you deny being a soul, you identify with something else. You just wear a different shade, but the problem remains the same. It's all shaded.

Thus, we see that for every statement you hold on to, you close yourself off from many possibilities. I am not advertising skepticism, however. I am staying away from a fruitive pursuit of truth, which almost looks like greed. If you learn to become knowledgeable, you are only gonna inflate your vessel. The more inflated your vessel, the more shaded your world. Thus, if you want to know, know not to get somewhere with it or become knowledgeable but to merely know. If you don't, your knowledge will become an impediment to knowledge. Perhaps, this is why Socrates famously said that he knew nothing. He probably meant he held on to nothing. He had seen through the game. He sought truth just for the fun of it. "An unexamined life is not worth living." Heard that one?