The Pursuit of Higher Understanding
Pursuing information and knowledge is good, but pursuing wisdom and understanding is better. The world we live in is overflowing with information. More and more websites, books, music, social media posts, shows, and so forth are being pumped out into the world day by day to absurd levels where we cannot keep up with it all. Even keeping up with one medium is quite difficult. There are too many books to read, too many shows to watch, and too much music to listen to.
Foolishly, many of us do aim to keep up with it. We feel that if we don't know some piece of information, then we will be left behind. At this point in human history, we have data that, to some extent, are immortal and indestructible. As with the cloud and internet, the data may live on forever. At the same time, the data is quite mortal because every time something new comes out, only moments later hundreds, or thousands, or more even newer and fresh productions are released, pushing the recently created ones out of our reach and out of our minds, deeper into our collective forgotten histories.
In this sense, Twitter seems to be a metaphor for our relationships with information. What is new becomes old almost immediately, goes out of reach, and then is forgotten. We are forever grasping for the new, but the new instantly becomes old. So our information and ideas always appear to be outdated.
Many of us are shouting louder and louder to bring attention to what we are doing, while people care less and less because there is so much new stuff out there all of the time. There are more and more bits of information floating around for us all to see and access, but most people lack direction and purpose for what we are supposed to do with this information. We mostly ignore the information, or it paralyzes us with fear, or we are perpetually talking about what is new and following the fads and trivializing this life. Still, either way, the information is either worthless or not properly utilized. We are silly in that we value this information so much that we are always chasing it.
For what? Knowledge without know-how is what? Awareness without action is what? Data without direction is what?
Ignorance. Futility. Emptiness.
We are hyper-connected and disconnected at the same time. We are so into our devices, always connected to the digital world but lost from the real world in front of us. The real world has become a mirage that seems less real than the digital world that we prefer to inhabit. That digital world makes us feel useful because we are addicted to information. We must know what new recipe our neighbor is trying out to impress her mother-in-law. We must know which asteroid is almost coming to hit the planet and end it all. We must know which major attack happened without cause. It just happened. We must know these things and yet can do nothing about them but grow more and more upset and discontent with this limited life we have.
The information is limitless, but we are limited in our time. We limit ourselves by focusing on the information itself as something to be valued, rather than what we will do with that information to make improvements. We must value true wisdom and understanding over the 0s and 1s of data and information. Wisdom and understanding transcend the information before it and will help us to rise and do something greater in this world.
How do we pursue wisdom and understanding? Daydream, write down our thoughts, start conversations with and listen to our elders, distance ourselves from the frenetic pace of modern life where everything must be done right away. We must be in a hurry and busy and worried, or we are not normal, and something is wrong with us. Be artistic, observe nature, people-watch, meditate, read from enlightened souls and classical works, and not just the new fad.
It is important that we not pursue trivial and temporary factoids and instead pursue practical knowledge that can have a true impact on our thoughts and actions. If we pursue enough of this kind of knowledge, it will lead to higher levels of wisdom and understanding.
