Why is knowledge not always power?
In Some things are best left unknown, Innocent admits that there are things he wishes he had never learned. A pleasing picture of a person or situation can give way to a reality that is harder to live with. Knowing more has not necessarily made life feel larger or easier.
This is an important difficulty inside the claim that knowledge is power. A fact may remove a belief you depended on without supplying the strength, options or understanding to live differently. You can be better informed and still feel diminished by what you now know.
A Spark from The Vision
Knowledge is power only when we choose to use it to our advantage.
Suppose you have been helping to organise an annual event. You hope to lead it next year, and someone involved has encouraged you to think that this might happen. Then you learn that the role was already promised to another person before those conversations took place.
The information changes the meaning of your expectation. You were considering a possibility that was not available. You may feel embarrassed by how openly you spoke about it, angry at the encouragement or uncertain about the work you have already given.
There is no need to call this empowering while it still feels like a loss. Nor must you decide that you are fortunate to have been misled. What the fact offers is narrower: you no longer have to make plans on the assumption that the role is open.
Even that clarity leaves questions unanswered. Was the person encouraging you aware of the promise? Is there another role you would actually want? Would you still enjoy contributing if leadership were not a possibility? The discovery matters, but it does not answer every question surrounding it.
That is one way knowledge can acquire more power than it deserves in your thinking. “This role was not available” can become “My work has never mattered” or “Nobody can be trusted.” Those larger conclusions may feel attached to the discovery without being established by it. Separating them does not soften the fact. It keeps one disappointment from pretending to be a complete account of your life.
You may eventually decide to stay involved for reasons you can name honestly. You may ask for an explanation, seek a different opportunity or leave. None of those choices will restore the possibility you thought you had. They can, however, be made with a more accurate understanding of what is being offered.
The chapter also asks why knowing we are alive does not automatically make us love life. Information alone does not determine the relationship we form with it. A truth can remain an object of fear, become a reason for a decision, or take time to find its place among other things we know.
Using knowledge well is therefore more than finding a positive interpretation. It might let you stop waiting for something that was never on offer. You may be able to ask for an explanation or decide not to give more time. Sometimes there is no immediate action, only the difficult work of no longer believing what the truth has displaced.
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AI-generated from Innocent Mwatsikesimbe's writing.
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