Can You Know Too Much?
It is good to gain knowledge. But is there a line between knowing, and when you know too much?
Previously I wrote about the topic of knowing. As I opined there, the key to knowing is to recognize that for the most part, we know far less than we think.
So if that is the case, is it even possible to know too much? And if so, what does that mean?
The short answer is, knowing too much is when you determine that you desire to know more, but then find knowing too much creates naught but negativity.
The long answer is, this is topic dependent, and further, is a matter of how the knowing will make you feel. Will you feel good from gaining these insights, or feel bad? Will you be destroying or creating in the knowing?
Take, for example, current American politics. Maybe you encounter a headline, and find you desire to know more…so you read the whole article. Now you have come to know more, and chances are what you know is not making you feel all that good. Do you read the comments now?
Right here is where it is unbelievably easy to know too much. Whether it’s the topic itself, or you fellow human beings and the terrible things people say in the comments, you are not feeling good, and you realize you were better off not knowing.
That’s one of the larger parts of the challenge. However, it generally boils down to how the knowing makes you feel.
Does this knowledge build you up in any way, or knock you down? Make you feel happy, or angry? Do you feel as if you have gained, or lost?
Yes, this is going to lead you to asking a lot of questions. But isn’t it questions that allow us to learn more about the world around us?
Part of the problem with our modern society is that the internet opens up to a lot more opinions than were readily available before. Sure, you could read an OpEd or have a discussion about political topics in school. But before the internet, the armchair experts of the digital age had a much narrower audience to share with.
Worse, the distinction between journalism and opinion has gotten blurrier and blurrier. From the legit to the outright bullshit, news is delivered in too many forms to be counted. It doesn’t help that the generally more legit (albeit imperfect) news media is called fake by the President these days. The lines between fact and fiction are easily difficult to distinguish.
Too many people take the idea of being entitled to their opinion at face value. Because they’re convinced their opinion is fact, they refuse to have real discussions about important matters. Legitimate science like climate change, for example, is denied in favor of unscientific opinion, because it lines pockets.
Digging into these matters in depth gets you to the point where you feel you know too much; not in the sense that you have expertise or can make good of your knowledge — but where you would have preferred to not found ways to get angry and depressed about the state of the world.
Yes. However, you are probably going to need to put in extra work to align your thoughts, feelings and actions towards that which you desire to make manifest.
Please don’t think I am asking for more ignorance. We really, really do not need more. What I am asking for, however, is reason. It is unbelievably easy to get angry about what is going on in the world today.
Now I am not saying that we should ignore these atrocities and let this continue…but what we do need to choose is to exercise judgement between information and inundation. When do you know too much to be able to effect any change?
That’s the key. We can use our anger and negativity to seek out changes in different forms…or do we allow it to so overwhelm us that we lose hope? And let’s face it, those who are making us angry would prefer that we lose hope. Hopeless people are a lot easier to control, exploit, and direct. To a large degree, that’s how we got here in the first place.
We are not going to know if we have come to know too much until we’re past that point. However, once we have gotten there, what we do next will determine where we go from here.
When we know too much about something, the negativity we feel tends to pull us further down. But when we recognize that this is where we are at, we can choose to use this as an opportunity to find something new.
I know that “situation x” is making me angry. Is there something I can do to remedy it? Can I donate time, money, or something else to something in opposition to it? What can I do to work with it to change it?
In other words, find an alternative to focus your thoughts, feelings, and actions on. In this way, we can consciously create a better reality, and just maybe change things, so that we have less to get readily negative about.
Knowledge is not just power, it is empowerment. Find your personal line between knowing and knowing too much, and empower yourself. The more you are empowered, the more you can help empower others.
What do you find you know too much about, and what can you do about it?
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
Originally published at titaniumdon.com on November 28, 2018.
Can You Know Too Much?
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