Choose Knowledge

"In much wisdom is much grief. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

-       Ecclesiastes; The Bible

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I’m reading Clint Smith’s How the Word Is Passed, his accounts of visiting plantations, cemeteries honoring Confederate soldiers, slave castles in West Africa and it’s not a happy story. Not only the horrors millions suffered in the past from the heavy blows of White Supremacy doctrines, but the determination of those in the present to keep that doctrine alive and pass it on (see the chapter on Blandford Cemetery). Indeed, this necessary knowledge of what went down and what continues to go down comes with the price of great sorrow and needed grief. Ecclesiastes got it right.

 

But it left out two important follow-ups:

 

1)   If we are to heal those sorrows brought on by human ignorance, greed, power and privilege, we have to pass through those sorrows and know the stories. That’s the social/political mandate.

 

2)   If we are to open our heart to joy, we equally have to open it to grief. That’s the spiritual/psychological mandate. 

 

We are in a time where those who purposeful promote mass ignorance and those who choose to follow that path are leading us over the cliff like obedient lemmings. Laws forbidding books in schools that tell the truth, conspiracy theories that care not for backing anything up with something as annoying as a fact, people who proudly profess “My ignorance is as good as your education” without a twitch of shame. Why do we even bother with the charade of schools and education beyond offering free baby-sitting for working parents?

 

Some of this comes from those terrified that they’ll lose their unearned powers and privileges, including their fantasy that even if they’re poor and marginalized, they might someday be in the “good ole boys club.” But I wonder if some comes from our mass illiteracy in the realm of social/emotional intelligence, our refusal to face grief because it hurts. Why read Clint Smith when one can be trolling social media and looking at cute cats? Doesn’t everybody tell us to. “have a nice day?”

 

And yet. Our refusal to look climate change in the face, to own our history of genocide and enslavement and make the long-overdue apologies, our excusing a convicted felon who openly vows to take down the freedoms so many have fought for, is about as dangerous a choice as we can make. We are literally making, as Carl Sagan suggest below, our own “Hell on Earth.” With heaven right at our fingertips, if we only choose to know. 

 

Let’s go, people. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Choose knowledge.