It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.
Lincoln Steffens
It was as if a splinter had hit me straight from my phone screen.
It baffled me, and shook me to my fundamentals in an illuminating way.
I was looking at an email I had just received from Prof. Irfan Habib, a towering historian with unparalleled erudition. I was convening an academic symposium at the behest of a college society at St. Stephen’s College. Habib sahab had already agreed to deliver the keynote lecture, and I was on cloud nine. However, his follow-up email sent me on a trajectory where I was far from being elated.
It was a simple email, listing some themes that he wished to speak on. We had discussed the topics earlier over a telephonic conversation, so that bit was rather customary. From an initial look at the email, I could have never imagined the surprise that was awaiting me in the last paragraph.
I still get goosebumps thinking about that sentence: “I would be guided by your preference.” Prof. Irfan Habib being guided by the preference of a third-year undergraduate student! As much as I felt vindicated at being considered worthy enough of being asked for my opinion, I wondered how he could be so humble. I would term this humility and not merely courtesy for his use of those specific words. A scholar of his stature would never require my preference to ‘guide’ him in choosing the topic of his lecture. A general polite enquiry would possibly sound something like “Please let me know what you want me to speak on, so that I can prepare accordingly.” Only a genuinely humble person could seek ‘guidance’ from someone younger, or lower in position. I am sure that many of my friends in public universities have had similar experiences while organizing events with established academicians. Humility comes with a certain wisdom found in people who are veritably knowledgeable. But how? And why?
These questions have never left me since then. The present article is an attempt to articulate my rather nebulous thoughts on the same. There is only so much one can write, especially on a topic so vast, and thoughts so scattered. I have no ambition to provide conclusive explanations for this. What I wish to do, is to put down my ramblings on paper.
A dear friend had once told me about Umberto Eco, the renowned novelist, essayist, and literary critic, who is credited with memorable novels like The Name Of the Rose. I think we were discussing about having dozens of unread books on our shelves. My friend, who happens to be way more precocious (in a good way) than I am, gave me some good deal of gyan on the concept of the anti-library. For a chronic sloth like me, this dose of philosophy felt as if an ounce got added to my self-indulgence. What is an anti-library, though?
Eco had about thirty thousand books in his collection. Towards the end of his life, when asked if he had read them all, he said no. In his inimitable style, he remarked that all those unread books formed his anti-library. They looked down at him menacingly from the book-shelves, reminding him of the gems of knowledge that eluded him, and would elude him forever.
Listening about it made me realize something very interesting. Probably, the act of gaining knowledge is not about knowing stuff, only. It is also about knowing what we do not know. The more we learn, the more we realize that we know so little. Precisely, this happens because we get to grapple with the knowledge of the things that we do not know. Let me give you an example. Today, if someone came up to me with a new word, like nephology, I would get to know that it stands for the science of clouds. I never knew this before, and I would be happy to know a new term. However, the very next moment, it would dawn upon me that there exists a whole branch of science dealing with clouds specifically, which I know nothing about. The more I start learning about clouds, the more I would realize that there is so much to know that I never will be able to.
Notice the word ‘menacingly’ in Eco’s anecdote. It is coated with an emotion of discomfort. It is this discomfort that comes with the act of knowing. With encountering new words, and new concepts. New concepts are like new lenses added on while you are at an optics shop, trying to fix your glasses. Every new lens makes our vision clearer. However, like every new lens ever, every new piece of knowledge sits on with us with some initial unease. To be even aware of, let alone witness, the unfathomable depth of knowledge that will always be out of one’s grasp is enough to make us feel deeply overwhelmed.
There are three possible ways out of this crucial juncture. Two of them are most common, since they both involve the least self-reflection. First, one might decide to simply give up. Choosing a random fine morning to decide that one knows enough, and does not need to know any further, is very comforting an escape. The person remains aware of their deep insecurities, and tries hard to shield them behind something I would like to call the “knower’s arrogance.” It is a simple term, used to describe a state of mind where a person thinks that they know just enough or even too much, and hence close themselves off to newer queries. Readers might find some similarity of my formulation with the cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. However, this effect is essentially a folly in judgement, which makes a person with low competence overestimate their ability. They know less, and therefore think that they know more.
“Knower’s Arrogance” is a bit different. It is premised upon a certain level of knowledge, and a stagnancy thereafter. This is a defence mechanism to not be reminded of the knower’s unmitigable inadequacy. That they cannot know everything in the world. That they cannot be at the top of every bit of knowledge that the universe has to offer. That they are humans, after all. They are wise, nevertheless, since they have the cognitive capacity to understand that they run the risk of losing their faux sense of self-pride, built by attaching their own self-esteem with their assumed and assured ability to know everything.
Second, one might get too greedy. They could very well start constructing capsules of knowledge in their head, and treat them as milestones to conquer. Just like a video game, acquiring one capsule of knowledge would be level one, the next conquest would be level two, and so on. I would like to call it the “Capsule approach”. It might appear innocuous on the face of it. However, on closer look, its pernicious designs become apparent. It has the potential to trick someone into understanding these capsules of knowledge as commodities, ready to be bought and sold in the market. Since they can be conquered through a degree of specialized training, it would be fair to make them accessible only to a select few who can afford to buy them. These capsules would then be graded and arranged hierarchically according to their supposed importance to the ones who control the market. More ‘useful’ capsules like engineering, law, finance, business management, and accountancy are higher up the ladder, while less ‘useful’ capsules like history, philosophy, literature, theoretical physics, and so on would be consigned for the lesser mortals. The hierarchy of these capsules is not fixed. It will depend upon the specific needs of the market from time to time. Sadly, our present pedagogies are designed to wholeheartedly cater to this capsule approach. The teacher is no longer a teacher but a course-instructor — a seller of a commodity. Students are not students, but consumers. The student-teacher relationship is one of consumption and consumption alone, not of mutual exchange and collaboration.
The two pathways mean dangerous things for our future, in different ways. The first would create a society of entitled humbugs, while the second would manufacture insufferable conformists — both knowledgeable and knowledge-starved. The sadder reality is that we all have variously walked on or are walking still on either of these two highways. My cynicism would have had the better of me but for the third path that I wish to expand on below.
Knowledge, just like the universe, expands every second. Faster does it expand, when someone tries to actively know more! However, the overwhelmed person, reeling from their sense of unease, now chooses not to give up their quest. They engage critically with their own beliefs and existing knowledge constantly. They read and experience more, trying to gather knowledge from everything they encounter. Unlike the first and the second highways, this is not an endeavour born out of insecurity or greed. It does not treat knowledge as a cliff to be surmounted. Rather, it considers knowledge as a vast ocean of unknown depths and breadth. One’s job is to surrender to those waves. A sort of other-worldly renunciation accompanies such surrender.
While surfing and swimming on those waves, we would understand that the ocean is made up of an infinite number of water droplets. The deeper we break every droplet, the more minute details we uncover. The molecules, the atoms, the particles, all stand exposed in before us. By gaining more knowledge about things that we know, we slowly get to pinpoint the things that we do not. Instead of getting paralyzed with that thought, if one can focus on tirelessly walking along that thorny path of knowledge, it can set them free. They would realize that they know very little, and hence would be extremely humble in the way they carry themselves. Humility stems from the courage to take on our own selves. To reflect on one’s own knowledge and put it to the fire of scrutiny. To be vulnerable, while trying to know — in the words of Will Durant — “less and less about the more and more.”
The more and more would always elude us, like the fine grains of sand. How to get hold of the elusive then? By not knowing. One might wrongly perceive the act of ‘not knowing’ as a passive by-product of ‘knowing’ itself. However, ‘not knowing’ is not antithetical but complementary to knowing more. How does one try to actively ‘not know’? By buying more books like Eco! Just joking. I do not have a concrete answer to this question. However, I can try to provide something more provisional.
Let us do an exercise. From tomorrow, we could all start keeping separate diaries to note down all that we do not know. Like a bucket list. Broad topics like ‘Neoliberalism’ or very specific ones like ‘Second Law of Thermodynamics’ — anything that pops up in our head. Doing this every day for a week would give us a lot of written text. Next, we choose something that we dearly wish to learn. ‘Primitive Accumulation,’ let us take. We start learning about it. We read Marx’s Capital, we read the commentaries. Two-three days pass in between. We stop. We start thinking about what we learnt. For a day, we think about it. Invariably, we would be led to other things that we do not know. Like, what is the notion of the ‘primitive’? Or, how is capital formed in today’s day and age? We pick up our pens and write down our thoughts in our notebook. Now, the list would have become longer, and better, than before. Only because we dived deep into something we liked. Only because we intensely thought about it.
Mindless hobbling, with books, articles, and research papers, would take us nowhere. If someone started reading everything that Marx and his intellectual compatriots wrote, considering each text read as a personal trophy of sorts, they would probably never get to ask more profound questions to find answers to. ‘Not knowing’ is deep, targeted thinking. It is taking a pause. It is being mindful. It is the time and the effort, spent in introspection.
This is not to discourage promiscuous reading, or to anyhow privilege specialization over general wisdom. One cannot actively ‘not know’ without reading and experiencing more. Also, everyone has a certain sense of the world around them and their place in it, coloured by their own biases and interests. It is imperative to consider, however, that everyone has a mental list of the things they do not know, but wish to. ‘Not knowing’ is the desire to know more, but to not dispose their own unique and authentic list. An active practitioner of ‘not knowing’ is content with the little that they know. At the same time, they take a genuine interest to add on to their list, from a positive will to know what they can and what they perhaps cannot.
Every day, we are tempted to form opinions on everything that is ‘trending’. The ‘hustle culture’ turns knowledge acquisition into a purely instrumental endeavour — a mere gateway to social capital. We tend to learn, only because we wish to opine. Having no opinion implies being left behind. A true ‘not knower’ can shut themselves off from such temptations, and would not feel the need to hanker for knowledge as a means to an end. Wisdom brings a certain calmness with it. A ‘not knower’ is patient, never feeling the need to scream their lungs out to the world. They constantly know and do not know, whether anyone is listening to them or not.
‘Not knowing’ is an art. It gets better with practice. One does not actually need a journal to maintain for this. Just picking a book up, and pausing for a while — to think about what all we would still not know even after reading it — would do the trick. This might not be too illuminating or original a suggestion, I know. Nonetheless, if you want this can be your cue to let go and seize the day.
Lokayata 